Court decisions, cost concerns drive growth in business for e-discovery firms

They are the data crunchers of the legal world, doing the digital equivalent of sifting through reams of documents in search of key phrases that can be used by companies as evidence to fight lawsuits or respond to subpoenas. These data crunchers are known as “e-discovery vendors,” and they are part of a growing and lucrative industry built around the management of electronic data. E-discovery includes any kind of electronically stored information —e-mails, text messages, and Facebook and Twitter posts — that law firms and corporate legal departments must gather, analyze and hand over to adversaries in litigation, or to the government in federal investigations into...