Corporate spending for electronic-discovery services, estimated at roughly $1.77 billion in 2006, is expected to increase by more than a third to $2.42 billion this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The reason? New Federal Rules of Civil Procedure passed by Congresss that are accelerating deadlines for companies to identify and describe electronically searchable information that can be used as evidence in a lawsuit.

From the WSJ’s Search Software Gets Boost From New Rules:

“The rules require that all relevant, nonprivileged and reasonably accessible information that can be used as evidence must be produced. In corporate lawsuits, parties are given 99 days to agree on a formal procedure outlining what information is to be produced, when it is to be made available and the form in which it is sent to the other party. These rules apply to both U.S. and foreign companies that are sued under federal law.”

The electronic discovery market is split between software and service providers.

Related Topics: Legal: General | Site & Enterprise Search

About The Author: Chris Sherman (@CJSherman) is Executive Editor of SearchEngineLand.com and President of Searchwise LLC, a Boulder Colorado based Web consulting firm. He also programs and co-chairs the Search Marketing Expo - SMX conference series. See more articles by Chris Sherman