MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(MARKET WIRE)--Aug 11, 2008 -- Clearwell Systems, Inc., a leader in Intelligent E-Discovery, today announced a "Top 10 Trends in E-Discovery" paper outlining the most important e-discovery strategies and observations based on feedback from corporations and law firms.

All of the trends highlight that corporations are taking greater control of e-discovery processes and partnering with their law firms to lower the cost, risk, and complexity of e-discovery. A detailed paper on the findings can be downloaded from Clearwell's Web site at http://clearwellsystems.com/offers/top10/.

The top ten trends are:

 
   1.  "E-Discovery Teams" are Coalescing -- Recognizing that e-discovery
       is changing from an ad-hoc event to a formal business process, both
       law firms and corporations are beginning to develop cross-functional
       "E-Discovery Teams" to help navigate the transition from reactive
       fire drills to proactive management.

   2.  Early Case Assessments Become Mainstream -- Understanding where a
       party stands at the earliest stages of litigation is critical to the
       outcome of a case. By selecting the right technology and
       implementing tools optimized for e-discovery analysis, legal
       professionals are better able to find and interpret key case facts
       from mountains of electronic case data.

   3.  "Search" Goes Under the Microscope -- Recent case law scrutinizes
       attorneys who navigate the search process alone; consensus between
       parties is critical. For a keyword search to pass judicial muster,
       it must be an agreed upon "Collaborative Search Approach" or adopt a
       "Best Practices & Data Driven Search Approach."

   4.  E-Discovery Moves In-House -- Corporations are bringing pieces of
       e-discovery in-house to reduce costs and streamline the process.
       Certain tasks will likely remain outsourced (e.g., forensic
       collection, large scale distributed review), whereas other routine
       tasks are quickly being brought in house (e.g., searching, culling,
       processing, analysis).

   5.  Review Mantra: "Smarter not Harder" -- Reducing the size of case
       datasets by removing irrelevant documents has been proven to lower
       processing costs by up to 80 percent, and reduce review workloads by
       up to 90 percent. In-house and outside counsel have significantly
       fewer documents to review, thus lowering resource requirements and
       cost.

   6.  The Standard of Care is Rising -- Rapidly -- The bar and bench is
       now using a common language around a new set of e-discovery
       challenges that did not exist until recently. As a result, attorneys
       and the parties they represent are getting fined and sanctioned for
       e-discovery negligence and abuse that would have been overlooked a
       year or two ago.

   7.  ESI Expands Well Beyond Email -- Legal professionals recognize the
       need to choose an e-discovery method that is flexible enough to
       encompass emerging communication technologies such as blogs, Wikis,
       voice over IP (VOIP), Webmail services, text and instant messaging,
       etc.

   8.  Custodial Data Increases by Orders of Magnitude -- Increasing
       volumes of data have reached a critical "tipping point," placing
       greater importance on data searching and aggressive use of ECA to
       quickly cull down data sets, in addition to automated document
       review methodologies.

   9.  Non-Manual Document Review -- Rising costs and compressed production
       deadlines are influencing attorneys to employ an iterative searching
       process that automatically weeds out confidential and other
       non-responsive and/or privileged documents prior to production.

  10.  Vendors Struggle to Adapt to the Evolving Landscape -- E-discovery
       has become more complex and specialized; thorough research must be
       conducted prior to selecting a solution.

"This year marks a turning point in e-discovery, where corporations are making significant investments to lower the cost, risk, and complexity of e-discovery," said Dean Gonsowski, vice president of E-Discovery Services, Clearwell Systems. "We believe the trends within our own customer base are consistent with the views of the larger market. People are getting smarter about the technologies and processes they are implementing, and the legal system is developing a better sense of awareness about e-discovery. These two factors are creating a real sense of urgency for both enterprises and law firms as they increase their focus on e-discovery."

About Clearwell Systems

Clearwell Systems is transforming the way enterprises perform e-discovery in response to litigation, regulatory inquiries, and corporate investigations. By automating the processing, analysis and review of all electronically stored information, Clearwell enables enterprises to accelerate early case assessments, lower processing costs, reduce review workload, and gain control of e-discovery. Clearwell was ranked a "Top 5" e-discovery software provider overall as well as a "Top 5" e-discovery provider for processing, analysis, review, and production in the 2008 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey. For more information, visit www.clearwellsystems.com or read the E-discovery 2.0 blog at: http://www.clearwellsystems.com/e-discovery-blog/.

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     Frances Bigley
     Barokas PR for Clearwell Systems
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