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Conclusion and Additional Resources

In 1849, French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote the phrase “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” In English, that translates to: “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Karr wasn’t thinking about ediscovery when he made that statement as the discipline of ediscovery wouldn’t exist for nearly 150 years. But it’s an appropriate statement to reflect how ediscovery professionals should approach ediscovery – expect continual change in the trends and best practices associated with the discipline of ediscovery.

That’s important to keep in mind when reviewing this ediscovery guide. While this guide reflects trends and best practices as of this writing, Everlaw recognizes those trends and best practices are always evolving due to changes in ESI, technology, regulations, and generally accepted best practices.

Let’s start with the trends that are likely to impact how ediscovery is conducted in the future. There are at least seven trends that Everlaw has identified that will impact ediscovery trends and best practices. Here are those notable future trends:

Expansion of Use Cases for Ediscovery

Another future trend is the expansion of use cases for ediscovery. ediscovery is no longer confined to litigation. Organizations are increasingly applying ediscovery tools and methodologies to a broader range of use cases, including internal investigations, data breach incident response, regulatory responses and audits, privacy requests – such as Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) – HSR second requests for mergers and acquisitions and more.

These new applications reflect a growing recognition that ediscovery platforms offer powerful capabilities for rapid fact-finding, targeted data analysis, and defensible documentation that can benefit a variety of business-critical functions. This trend will accelerate as legal, compliance, and cybersecurity teams face mounting pressure to respond quickly to risk events, often involving large volumes of unstructured data from disparate systems.

As a result, ediscovery professionals will increasingly find themselves collaborating across departments and adapting their skills for scenarios that require investigative speed, cross-border sensitivity, and interdisciplinary coordination. This expansion will also necessitate rethinking workflows and cost structures to support more dynamic, non-traditional use cases efficiently.

Proliferation of Emerging Data Sources

Throughout this guide, we have discussed how the rise of collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom has transformed workplace communication, resulting in increasingly fragmented, non-linear conversations spread across chat, voice, and video. Traditional email is no longer the dominant form of communication, forcing ediscovery teams to rethink preservation, collection, and review strategies. Mobile device data adds further complexity, particularly in BYOD environments where legal ownership and access rights must be carefully assessed.

Looking ahead, this trend will intensify with the integration of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the growing use of audio and video communications and the growing use of generative AI chatbots. And those are just the known data sources at this point. Ediscovery professionals must be prepared to develop workflows that can not only preserve and collect this data but also reconstruct contextually coherent narratives from dispersed and ephemeral sources.

Increased Adoption of Generative AI and Agentic AI

We’ve already devoted an entire chapter to GenAI’s impact on ediscovery, but the trend bears repeating here. GenAI is already transforming how legal teams handle document summarization, privilege analysis, and initial case assessments. Future iterations will further automate ediscovery workflows, especially when integrated with agentic AI (AI that can act autonomously with goals). These systems will move beyond passive suggestion and begin initiating tasks like drafting hold notices, clustering conceptually similar documents, and even proposing ESI protocol terms based on precedent and case type.

As AI adoption grows, so too will the scrutiny. Courts and opposing counsel are increasingly asking: “How did you validate the AI’s output?” Transparency, auditability, and human oversight will remain critical. ediscovery teams should prepare now by developing documentation protocols, maintaining AI usage logs, and understanding the limits of these tools in areas like bias, hallucination, or overfitting in model training.

Greater Emphasis on Data Privacy and Cross-Border Data Transfers

Ediscovery is becoming increasingly international, which means data is being transferred cross-border. Global privacy regulations like the EU’s GDPR, Brazil’s LGPD, and emerging US state laws are putting new pressures on ediscovery practices, especially for multinational corporations. Cross-border data transfers now face legal hurdles requiring data localization, redaction, or anonymization of personal information before disclosure in litigation.

In the future, privacy-by-design workflows will become standard, and legal teams will need to embed privacy assessments directly into ediscovery planning. Technologies that support real-time detection and anonymization of PII and protected health information (PHI) during review will gain prominence. Additionally, coordinated strategies between data privacy, legal, and IT teams will be essential for navigating regulatory minefields while ensuring defensible, efficient discovery.

Consolidation of Ediscovery, Information Governance, and Compliance Functions

The traditional silos separating legal hold, records management, and compliance are dissolving. Legal departments are increasingly seeking unified platforms that can manage ESI from initial creation through final disposition. This end-to-end governance approach is driven by rising costs, data sprawl, and regulatory risks associated with unmanaged data.

Going forward, successful ediscovery professionals will need to understand broader enterprise data governance strategies, including data minimization, defensible disposition, and cloud information lifecycle management. Skills in privacy risk assessment, policy automation, and cross-functional collaboration will be as critical as technical know-how in search syntax or review platforms.

Rise of Real-Time and Continuous Discovery Models

With data volumes growing and litigation timelines shrinking, traditional batch-oriented discovery workflows are giving way to more continuous, iterative models. Real-time legal holds, rolling productions, and predictive coding that adapts as more documents are reviewed are becoming essential in high-velocity matters such as government investigations and mass torts.

In the future, ediscovery professionals will likely be expected to operate in more agile, sprint-based cycles, similar to software development. Continuous integration with enterprise systems (e.g., Microsoft Purview, Google Vault, Salesforce) and real-time dashboards for legal teams will enable better responsiveness, early risk detection, and faster decision-making. This will require a mindset shift from "project-based" discovery to "always-on" discovery readiness.

EDRM 2.0 Project

Finally, as we noted in the Introduction to Ediscovery chapter when discussing the EDRM, they’re currently working on the EDRM 2.0 project, which is the first project since the original EDRM model was published in 2005 to consider changes to the core model itself. Team members from Everlaw have been part of this project since its inception and we expect that EDRM will publish a proposed revised model for public comment soon.

While the model may change the look of the EDRM model as we know it, nothing will change the fact that the discipline of information governance will remain vital to effective ediscovery, nor will it change the importance of data preservation and legal holds, early case assessment, cooperation mechanisms such as ESI protocols or meet and confers between parties, or the importance of document review (still the most expensive phase of ediscovery). What will likely change are some of the best practices associated with these important ediscovery fundamentals, which will be reflected in updates to this guide.

Educational Resources

In addition to this guide, here are several educational resources to consider to not only deepen your understanding of ediscovery best practices, but also to stay abreast of emerging trends that will impact those best practices:

Industry Resources

There are several industry resources available dedicated to ediscovery education that should be included in a list of regularly read resources. They include:

·   eDiscovery Today: The only daily blog dedicated to ediscovery, eDiscovery Today typically provides multiple blog posts each day on ediscovery, cybersecurity, data privacy, information governance and AI trends, best practices and case law. The blog is managed by Doug Austin, who has over 30 years of experience providing ediscovery best practices, legal technology consulting, and technical project management services to numerous commercial and government clients.

·   ComplexDiscovery: The blog ComplexDiscovery is a highly recognized digital publication focused on providing detailed insights into the fields of cybersecurity, information governance, and ediscovery, managed by Rob Robinson, who is a long time marketing professional in the ediscovery space.

·   EDRM’s blog: EDRM has an active blog with multiple blog posts per week, related to ediscovery and related topics, including cybersecurity, data privacy and AI. EDRM has been named the #1 Firm in Ediscovery in JD Supra’s Readers’ Choice Awards for 2023, 2024, and 2025. EDRM also has an active webinar program and conducts several educational webinars per month.

·   ACEDS blog: The Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS) also has an active blog with several blog posts per month on ediscovery certification, education and related topics. ACEDS also has an active webinar program and conducts several educational webinars per month.

·   Minerva26: The blog for Minerva26 (formerly eDiscovery Assistant) publishes several posts per month designed to provide thought leadership, case law updates, and ediscovery best practices to the ediscovery community.

·   eDiscovery Journal: Published since 2008, eDiscovery Journal is designed to focus on ediscovery news, commentary, research, tools, surveys and more. Its Editor is Greg Buckles, who has several decades of experience in the legal and ediscovery industries.

Everlaw Resources

As Everlaw has always stressed the importance of education to the legal and ediscovery communities, we would be remiss if we didn’t include our own resources. They include:

·   Everlaw blog: Everlaw has an active blog with several blog posts per month on ediscovery trends and best practices, as well as tips for maximizing the value of Everlaw.

·   Everlaw Resource Center: The Everlaw Resource Center provides access to all of Everlaw’s educational resources, including webinars (completed and upcoming), success stories, white papers, reports and more.

·   Everlaw Knowledge Base: Everlaw’s Knowledge Base provides articles on a variety of topics to expand your knowledge of Everlaw’s capabilities and features, ranging from getting started to document review to search to project and database administration to AI Assistant to Storybuilder and much more.

·   Everlaw Training Center and Product Certification: The Everlaw Training Center provides several training videos that walk you through key functionality in Everlaw. And the Everlaw Certification program enables you to obtain key certifications to demonstrate your expertise with Everlaw!

·   Everlaw Community: Everlaw’s community forum enables you to share tips and tricks, ask questions, provide product feedback and more to the community and the Everlaw team.