eDiscovery Leaders Live: Gavin Manes of Avansic

Gavin Manes, CEO of Avansic, joins George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal, for ACEDS #eDiscoveryLeadersLive.

Dr. Gavin Manes is a nationally recognized expert in e-discovery and digital forensics. Gavin founded Avansic in 2004 after completing his Doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Tulsa. At Avansic, Gavin is committed to high-technology innovation, research, and mentorship, and currently has several patents pending. Avansic's scientific approach to eDiscovery and digital forensics stems from his academic experience. Gavin routinely serves as an expert witness for legal proceedings including courtroom testimony, depositions, and consulting with attorneys on data preservation issues. To maintain his expert standing, Gavin contributes academic content that is published in peer-reviewed journals, he presents at conferences and symposia, and delivers university classroom lectures. His full CV can be found at http://www.gavinmanes.com/.

Gavin focused on two topics for our discussion: collection of data from mobile devices, and Avansic’s new eDiscovery services assessment. On the former, he talked about the differences between collecting data from iPhones and Android devices, what data you should expect to be able to collect from the device itself as opposed to from the cloud, and some of the challenges of working with data collected from the phones. He reiterated what we’ve heard so many times before, that there is no big easy button for eDiscovery, and offered his thoughts on where the industry is headed. Gavin the described Avansic’s new eDiscovery services assessment and shared his hopes for what that assessment will accomplish and where it will head. Finally, Gavin gave us tips on how to save money in eDiscovery.

Key Highlights

• [3:04] Impacts of the pandemic on data collection.
• [4:33] Collection that still needs to be done in person – cell phones.
• [4:52] Collecting iPhone data.
• [5:59] What you don’t get with an iCloud backup – email, possibly deleted data, maybe messages.
• [8:58] Collecting data from Android devices.
• [10:10] The many different backup systems for Android devices.
• [11:59] The challenge of the bubble format.
• [13:54] No easy button.
• [16:16] A shift to self-serv brought on by the pandemic.
• [19:57] Next evolutions in eDiscovery.
• [22:11] Avansic’s new eDiscovery services assessment – what it is.
• [23:58] The reaction to it.
• [25:11] Where they might head with their assessment.
• [26:54] How to save money in eDiscovery.
  
  

Key Quotes 

• • “After years of practicing that remote style collection for the iPhone, there’s very little difference you get between the backup versus the local extraction, just because of the way the data is stored on the device.”
  • “Apple is one phone, one voice…. Android is the exact opposite. There’s thousands of variants of the operating system and hundreds if not thousands of variants of the hardware.”
  • “You sprinkle all the other collab apps…, Slack and WeChat and blah, blah, blah, and now you’ve blown open Pandora’s box again.”
  • “How do you save money in eDiscovery? The answer is, preparation, preparation, preparation…. The sooner you call me, the less money I’m going to make.”
    
    

Connect with Gavin

• Gavin Manes on LinkedIn