Organizations need to buckle up as emerging data sources continue to drive up volumes in e-discovery and the data repercussions of the March 2020 shift to remote work begins to manifest in discovery workflows. Alongside this shift, physical data sources like laptops and mobile phones will decline in significance in many private civil ligation discovery matters but will become more critical in internal investigations and IP theft litigation.

We’re also likely to see more impactful caselaw relating to emerging data sources—particularly around linked content, permissions and dynamic versions—come out of the U.S. courts. The organizations that continue to address emerging data sources in their legal operations and information governance programs will be better prepared than most for the myriad e-discovery implications on the horizon.

To help organizations better understand these issues, and how to prepare, our team has compiled several predictions for 2022 in the emerging data sources and e-discovery arenas. These include:

• “We’ll continue to see more changes in the way people interact with technology and how we communicate, which will further impact how and where data is stored. IoT is one category where I expect we’ll see the universe of enterprise data expand further. While most IoT offerings are in the consumer products space, between the ongoing advancement of technology and the new remote work dynamic, we’re likely to see data from IoT devices increasingly bleed into the realm of investigations and e-discovery.” – Ken Oliver, Managing Director
• "The data landscape has shifted significantly during the pandemic, and we will continue to experience the ongoing effects of this in e-discovery. For example, we'll see fewer collections involving legacy data sources like hard drives and mobile phones, but far more instances and volume of emerging data sources. For legal teams and in-house counsel, this will force a refresh in how to approach and format data through preservation, collections, processing, review and production phases of discovery. This is completely new territory for legal professionals, and it will be critical for counsel to stay abreast of the evolving landscape and remain flexible to ensure they can implement workflows that allow for efficient, meaningful and defensible handling of non-traditional electronic data." - Elizabeth Noble, Senior Director
• "Portable AI models will be used more frequently in e-discovery as practitioners better understand the value advanced tools can offer, particularly in increasing efficiencies and reducing review costs. I believe we'll see an uptick in the time legal teams spend exploring these tools and learning how to use them to leverage learning from previous data sets and cases." – Jessica de Brignac, Senior Director
• “The proliferation of advanced analytics/review tools will require managed review providers to continually train reviewers on the new technology. This will also result in more work opportunities for reviewers – perhaps a niche group - who embrace the new technology, and develop intermediate and advanced review skills utilizing these tools. Foreign language reviews will continue to increase due to the global data footprint of multinational entities. This includes a varied medley of foreign language communications and files which are increasingly coming into scope in legal and regulatory discovery and investigations. “ – Van Mejia, Senior Director

The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of FTI Consulting, its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals.