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eDiscoveryDaily

Revised Federal Rule Amendments One Step Closer – eDiscovery Trends

As noted by a recent article in Law Technology News, a revised package of amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) is one step closer to being adopted.

The article Standing Committee OKs Federal Discovery Amendments, written by Thomas Allman, notes that last month, the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure (the “Standing Committee”) approved proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, including the 2010 Civil Litigation Conference, held at Duke University’s law school, sponsored and organized by the advisory committee (a.k.a., the “Duke Rules Package”), addressing Rules 1, 4, 16, 26, 30, 31, 33, and 34 and a rewritten version of Rule 37(e), addressing preservation.

The amendments include significant changes from the original proposals, reflecting feedback from three public hearings that drew more than 120 witnesses and 2,356 written comments.  Many of those comments were focused on controversial Rule 37(e) – discussed on this blog here.

As the article notes, “[t]he next stop is a review by the Judicial Conference in September. If approved, the U.S. Supreme Court will be asked to review and vote on whether to send the amendments to Congress. If that occurs before May 2015, the individual rules will become effective in December 2015, unless Congress disapproves.”

Here is a link to the agenda and the text of the rules as adopted that was published in the Standing Committee’s meeting Agenda Book.

Click here, here, here, here and here for previous posts on this blog regarding the proposed rules changes.

So, what do you think?  Will the rules amendments pass this time?  Should they?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Want My Production? Here’s my Database! – eDiscovery Trends

A couple of weeks ago, we covered a case where the US Government was ordered to continue providing access to an eDiscovery database to a defendant in a criminal case.  That case shed light on a growing trend in the industry that I have also observed personally – “producing” documents to opposing counsel by providing access to the documents via a hosted eDiscovery solution.

In Craig Ball’s Lawyer’s Guide to Forms of Production (that we recently covered here), Craig identified hosted production as one of the options for forms of production that can be requested.  However, as Craig notes, “More commonly, hosted data and online review tools are used internally by a producing party’s counsel to search the data for privileged and responsive items rather than as a means to afford access to the requesting party. The items identified are then duplicated onto transfer media (e.g., optical disks or a hard drive) and produced in one or more of the formats described above.”

That is certainly true, though more parties in litigation are choosing to provide access to the online database as a means of production (“production without production” as Craig calls it).  While I don’t have any statistics to point to, that has at least been my recent experience as platform manager for OnDemand®, CloudNine Discovery’s own hosted eDiscovery platform.

Typically, there are two options for producing documents by providing online access: 1) provide access to the existing database, or 2) create a new database of produced documents.  Here are the pros and cons of each:

  • Existing Database: Many parties provide access to portions of their existing eDiscovery database.  This reduces costs because the data is already hosted and may be a way for both parties to share hosting costs.  In those instances, security becomes paramount.  As attorneys need to exclude access to non-responsive or privileged documents and other work product, the eDiscovery application needs to provide the ability to limit the documents that users can see as well as limit the fields that users can see.  In addition, it’s important to have a well-documented plan for the database administrator to follow to ensure that the correct rights are assigned.  If not, inadvertent disclosures of documents or data fields used during review and production can occur.
  • New Database: While it may cost more to create a new database of produced documents (essentially doubling the storage of those documents into a new database), it is much easier to secure privileged information and attorney work product because those documents and data fields simply aren’t there, essentially eliminating the possibility of an inadvertent disclosure due to incorrect rights assignments.  In these cases, the receiving party often agrees to bear the costs of hosting their portion of the data.

In both cases, the advantages to the receiving party include access to the same produced documents in the same format in which they were reviewed using the same search and analytical tools that the producing party used to produce the documents, putting both parties on equal footing.

So, what do you think?  Have you been part of a hosted production?  If so, how did it go?  Were you on the producing or receiving end?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Portions of Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel eDiscovery Ruled as “Overbroad” and “Moot” Reaffirmed by District Court – eDiscovery Case Law
 

In Elkharwily v. Mayo Holding Co., 12-3062 (DSD/JJK), 2014 U.S. Dist. (D. Minn. Apr. 18, 2014), Minnesota District Judge David S. Doty overruled the plaintiff’s objection to a magistrate judge’s order that denied in part the plaintiff’s motion to compel discovery, labeling some requests as overbroad or moot, particularly after the defendant contended it had already produced the requested discovery materials.

This employment dispute was brought about when the plaintiff was terminated from the defendant’s employment. The plaintiff claims that after observing and reporting several instances of negligence and fraud in this medical setting, he was placed on administrative leave and asked to resign. When the plaintiff refused, the defendant terminated his employment. The resulting civil action filed by the plaintiff accuses the defendant of breach of contract and retaliation.

At issue here was an earlier order by a magistrate judge that denied in part the plaintiff’s Motion to Compel discovery of the defendant’s Electronically Stored Information (ESI). Specifically, the plaintiff sought to overturn the decision denying his motion to compel related to:

  • Requests for Production 9 and 12 and Interrogatories 14, 15, 16, and 20
  • Requests for Production 1, 2, and 10
  • Requests for Production 4, 5, and 6

Regarding the Requests for Production 9 and 12 and Interrogatories 14, 15, 16, and 20, which sought in part “any communications between any [defendant’s] employee and any potential employer of [plaintiff],” it was initially determined that the requests were overbroad, as they “presented the opportunity to investigate other unpleaded claims.” These requests and interrogatories were deemed “unduly expansive and seek[ing] material well outside the boundaries of permissible discovery.” Judge Doty concluded that the initial ruling on these issues was “neither clearly erroneous nor contrary to law,” as the plaintiff contended.

Requests for Production 1, 2, and 10 sought discovery relevant to the case. Specifically, Production 1 sought “[a]ll documents…maintained by [defendant] or any employee or agent of [defendant], relating to [plaintiff],” Production 2 sought “[a]ll email and text messages sent or received on [plaintiff’s work assigned] email and text messaging accounts,” and Production 10 sought “[all] documents, notes, communications, emails and text messages relating to [plaintiff] or to any of the claims or defenses in this action prepared, sent or received by [defendant],” all of which were initially denied as being overbroad and moot. In response to this, the defendant noted that it had already produced responsive documents to these Requests for Production, with redactions and assertions of privilege subject to future consideration. Therefore, Judge Doty noted that the plaintiff appeared to have no persisting objection to the initial ruling.

With regard to Requests for Production 4, 5, and 6, which had initially been overruled as moot, the plaintiff cited the initial order and argued that “(1) the order does not explicitly require [defendant] to include in its log otherwise-responsive documents not produced due to an asserted privilege and (2) the order does not compel production of patient files.” The defendant responded that it had already produced all responsive and non-privileged documents, had provided the plaintiff with a privilege log which logged all withheld documents, and further that the requested documents did not “reference, rely upon or incorporate patient files.”

In this final issue, Judge Doty noted that the court “must accept, at face value, a party’s representation that it has fully produced all materials that are responsive to a discovery request,” and that Rule 26 “provides adequate protection to ensure that, if [d]efendants are found to be deficient in their document production, appropriate sanctions will be leveled and [the plaintiff] will not suffer undue prejudice.” Therefore, the plaintiff’s objection to the portion of the objection relating to those requests for production was also overruled.

So, what do you think? Should any of the plaintiff’s objections have been considered more seriously?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Court Denies Defendant’s Request for Deposition Regarding Plaintiff’s Discovery Search Tools – eDiscovery Case Law

In Koninklijke Philips N.V. v. Hunt Control Sys., Inc., 11-3684 (DMC) (D.N.J. Apr. 16, 2014), New Jersey Magistrate Judge James B. Clark III granted the plaintiff’s protective order to prevent the defendant from proceeding with a new deposition to review whether the plaintiff had used “appropriate search tools for ESI discovery,” after the requested discovery documents had already been produced.

This instant action on an intellectual property dispute concerned the defendant’s reissuance of a Notice of Deposition pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 30(b)(6) for the plaintiff’s IT representative, who had already given a deposition that had been stayed by a previous court when the defendant sought to request responses from the plaintiff to eight questions “that [defendant] alleges were not adequately answered” by the IT representative. The plaintiff objected to the reissued notice during a conference, and was granted leave to file for a protective order.

The defendant claimed that the plaintiff’s discovery production was materially deficient, and outlined seven categories of documents which it alleged were missing documents, returning low portions of requested documents, or not produced at all. In support of the 30(b)(6) deposition request, the defendant submitted declarations from its IT expert which stated in part that “due to its cloud-based IT structure, [plaintiff] has available to it some of most (sic) sophisticated and comprehensive state-of-the-art document search and location tools” and yet the plaintiff “refuses to use these tools to satisfy its obligations.”  The defendant claimed that it was “entitled to the deposition to understand why and how these sophisticated tools are somehow inappropriate in spite of their clear design to accommodate eDiscovery.”

In response, the plaintiff contended that the deposition was initially stayed pending the plaintiff’s response to the eight questions the defendant claimed were not adequately answered, and not pending the defendant’s review of the plaintiff’s discovery production. It was noted that the previous court invited the defendant to “reapply” for a deposition once both parties had “met and conferred in good faith” regarding discovery, yet the defendant had simply re-noticed the deposition. The plaintiff also submitted a declaration from its IT expert, confirming that the plaintiff had answered the eight questions adequately, and that “a custodian-based approach to collecting ESI” was its usual method of discovery production.

The plaintiff requested the protective order blocking the deposition because the ESI production approach described by the defendant would be unduly burdensome, noting that its current contract with its outsourced IT provider “neither includes, contemplates, nor currently permits the type of searching and collection that [defendant] suggest[s].” Further declarations submitted by the plaintiff attested to the reasonableness of its approach to ESI production.

Judge Clark based the ultimate ruling on this motion on legal standards set forth by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26, which governs the scope of discovery in federal litigation and requires in part that discovery scope be limited where “the discovery sought is unreasonably cumulative or duplicative, or can be obtained from some other source that is more convenient, less burdensome, or less expensive” and where “the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.”

In reviewing the arguments from both sides, Judge Clark found that the plaintiff had adequately represented the reasonableness of its approach to ESI discovery and production, that it had demonstrated that several categories of the defendant’s claims of deficient production were “speculative and suggestive in nature,” and that the defendant had failed to demonstrate that “the benefits of the deposition would likely outweigh the burden associated with it.” In fact, the proposed deposition had “the potential to cause tremendous burden” to the plaintiff. Therefore, the plaintiff’s motion for a protective order was granted.

So, what do you think? Was the defendant’s request unduly burdensome or should they have been granted the second deposition? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Richard G. Braman: 1953 – 2014

I learned from Ralph Losey’s excellent blog, e-Discovery Team ®, that Richard Braman, the Founder and Executive Director Emeritus of The Sedona Conference®, passed away on Monday after battling an extended illness.  He was only 60 years old.

For those of you who don’t know, The Sedona Conference® (TSC) is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) research and educational institute dedicated to the advanced study of law and policy in the areas of antitrust law, complex litigation, and intellectual property rights. The mission of TSC is to drive the reasoned and just advancement of law and policy by stimulating ongoing dialogue amongst leaders of the bench and bar to achieve consensus on tipping point issues.  Richard founded the TSC in 1997 and its impact on the legal world and electronic discovery has been enormous.

Another of Ralph’s posts from a couple of years ago provides a lot of insight about TSC and Richard, as well.  In the post, with regard to electronic discovery, Ralph provides a list of 35 publications that TSC’s Working Group 1 on Electronic Document Retention and Production had (at the time) generated since 2003.  All of these publications are free from the TSC website!

That’s the number of publications just for one working group – there are nine(!) other working groups in TSC, related to everything from The Role of Economics in Antitrust to Intersection of the Patent and Antitrust Laws and Mass Torts and Punitive Damages.  You start to really get a sense of the enormous impact that TSC has had on the legal profession.

Richard is one of the “true American heroes” that Joe Looby references in his documentary The Decade of Discovery that is set to be shown at the Manhattan Film Festival next Saturday (June 21) for their contributions to the tremendous progress made over the past decade in eDiscovery practice.  In 2013, he was named by The American Lawyer as “one of the 50 most innovative people in Big Law in the last 50 years.”

Richard’s legacy will live on indefinitely through TSC and those of us in the legal industry, attorneys and technologists alike, have benefitted greatly from his influence.  The In Memoriam page on the TSC site can be found here, with two video clips of Richard from The Decade of Discovery.  His obituary and information on his memorial service can be found here.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

The Pitfalls of Self-Culling and Image Files – eDiscovery Best Practices

This topic came up with a recent client, so I thought I would revisit it here on this blog.

There’s a common mistake that organizations make when collecting their own files to turn over for discovery purposes.  Many attorneys turn over the collection of potentially responsive files to the individual custodians of those files, or to someone in the organization responsible for collecting those files (typically, an IT person) and the self-collection involves “self-culling” through the use of search terms.  When this happens, important files can be missed.

Self-culling by custodians, unless managed closely, can be a wildly inconsistent process (at best).  You’re expecting each custodian to apply the same search terms consistently and, even if IT performs the self-culling, the process may have to be repeated if additional search terms are identified later on.  Even worse, potentially responsive image-only files will be missed with self-culling.

It’s common to have a number of image-only files within any collection, especially if the custodians frequently scan executed documents or use fax software to receive documents from other parties.  In those cases, image-only PDF or TIFF files can often make up as much as 20% of the collection.  When custodians are asked to perform “self-culling” by performing their own searches of their data, these files, which could contain information responsive to the case, will certainly be missed.

With the possibility of inconsistent self-culling, the possibility of additional search terms identified later and the (almost certain) presence of image-only files, I usually advise against self-culling by custodians.  I also don’t recommend that IT perform culling on behalf of the custodians, unless they have the ability to process that data to identify image-only files and perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to capture text from them.  If your IT department has the capabilities and experience to do so (and the process and chain of custody is well documented), then that’s great.  However, most internal IT departments either don’t have the capabilities or expertise (or both), in which case it’s best to collect all potentially responsive files from the custodians and turn them over to a qualified eDiscovery provider to perform the culling (performing OCR as needed to include responsive image-only files in the resulting responsive document set).  Unless the case requires supplemental productions, there is also no need to go back to the custodians to collect additional data with the full data set available.

So, what do you think?  Do you self-collect data for discovery purposes?  If so, how do you account for image-only files?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Court Rules that Unilateral Predictive Coding is Not Progressive – eDiscovery Case Law

In Progressive Cas. Ins. Co. v. Delaney, No. 2:11-cv-00678-LRH-PAL (D. Nev. May 19, 2014), Nevada Magistrate Judge Peggy A. Leen determined that the plaintiff’s unannounced shift from the agreed upon discovery methodology, to a predictive coding methodology for privilege review was not cooperative.  Therefore, the plaintiff was ordered to produce documents that met agreed-upon search terms without conducting a privilege review first.

This declaratory relief action had been plagued by delays in discovery production, which led to the defendants filing a Motion to Compel the plaintiffs to produce discovery in a timely fashion. Following a hearing, both sides were ordered to meet and confer, and hold meaningful discussions about resolving outstanding ESI issues pursuant to discovery. The plaintiff contended that the defendant’s discovery requests, as standing, would require them to produce approximately 1.8 million documents, which would be unduly burdensome. Both parties agreed to search terms that would reduce the number of potentially responsive documents to around 565,000, which the plaintiff would manually review for privileged documents before producing discovery to the defendant.

Shortly thereafter, the plaintiff determined that manual review would be too expensive and time-consuming, and therefore after consulting with a “nationally-recognized authority on eDiscovery,” elected to apply predictive coding to the identified 565,000 documents. Plaintiff selected a software program that they began using to identify relevant documents with the intention of applying a further predictive coding layer in order to determine which documents were “more likely privileged” and which were “less likely privileged.”

However, the plaintiff did not consult with either the court or the requesting party regarding their intentions to change review methodology. As a result, the defendant objected to the use of predictive coding in this case for several reasons, including the plaintiff’s lack of transparency surrounding its predictive coding methodology and its failure to cooperate, as well as the plaintiff’s failure to adhere to the best practices for the chosen software program which were recommended to them by the authority they chose. Finally, the defendants cited a likelihood of satellite disputes revolving around discovery, should the plaintiff proceed with the current predictive coding, which would further delay production discovery that had already been “stalled for many months.”

The defendant requested that either the plaintiff be required to proceed with predictive coding according to the defendant’s suggested protocol, which would include applying the predictive methodology to all of the originally collected 1.8 million documents, or that the plaintiff produce the non-privileged keyword hits without any review, but allowing them to be subject to a clawback order—which was a second option included in the originally stipulated ESI protocol that both parties had agreed to. Although this option would shift the burden of discovery to the defendant, it was noted that the defendant was “committed to devot[ing] the resources required to review the documents as expeditiously as possible” in order to allow discovery to move forward.

Judge Leen acknowledged potential support for the general methodology of predictive coding in eDiscovery, and stated that a “transparent mutually agreed upon” protocol for such a method would likely have been approved. However, Judge Leen took issue that the plaintiff had refused to “engage in the type of cooperation and transparency that its own eDiscovery consultant has so comprehensibly and persuasively explained is needed for a predictive coding protocol to be accepted by the court or opposing counsel” and instead had “elected and then abandoned the second option—to manually review and produce responsive ESI documents. It abandoned the option it selected unilaterally, without the [defendant’s] acquiescence or the court’s approval and modification of the parties’ stipulated ESI protocol.”

Therefore, Judge Leen elected to enforce the second option described in the agreed-upon ESI protocol, and required the plaintiff to produce all 565,000 documents that matched the stipulated search terms without review, with a clawback option in place for privileged documents as well as permission to apply privilege filters to the documents at issue, and withhold those documents that returned as “most likely privileged.”

So, what do you think? Should parties need to obtain approval regarding the review methodology that they plan to use?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Government Ordered to Maintain Expensive Custom Database Shared with Criminal Defendant – eDiscovery Case Law
 

In the criminal case of United States v. Shabudin, No. 11-cr-00664-JSW-1 (NJV) (N.D. Cal. Apr. 8, 2014), California Magistrate Judge Nandor J. Vadas ordered the Government to continue to provide access to a Relativity Database used by the parties to review documents produced by the Government, instead of discontinuing access for the defendants several weeks before trial was to begin due to budgetary issues.

The Government had voluntarily created the database to manage the vast quantities of documents being produced for discovery in this action, “because it was in its interest to do so”. An agreement had been negotiated between the parties that would allow the defendants to access the database and review discovery documents, and to employ third-party “project managers” for technical and substantive support.  Although the parties stipulated that the database has been “completed” in January of 2013, after more than 9 million documents had been uploaded, the defendants did not gain access until February of 2014.

At some point after beginning to work with the database, the defendants came to realize that not all of the documents produced in the action had been uploaded. Specifically, absent from the database were the contents of three hard drives, and 159 boxes of hard copy material amounting to nearly 1 million pages of documents. Defendants filed a motion to compel the Government to add the missing documents to the database, but, during a hearing on the motion to compel, the Government voluntarily offered to upload 2 of the 3 hard drives, and scan the hard copy materials into the database, asking that they not be ordered to do so.

Following this commitment, the Government indicated for the first time during the proceedings that “the ‘extra cost’ associated with this ‘voluntary’ commitment would draw down on the $1.8 million budget that had been allocated to Database, and ‘for this reason, we anticipate funding for the Database will end” four months from that point. Further, the Government stated that they had looked into “new – and more expensive – alternatives,” namely that they would expend resources to have the materials uploaded to the database within 2 months, and that the defendants would have 2 months to access and review the “old” documents plus the new material, at which point the database would be “transferred to a Concordance database that Defendants could maintain at their own cost.”

The defendants objected to this proposal, and Judge Vadas ordered the Government to provide more information about the effects of transferring the documents to a Concordance database. The Government declared that the cost of the transfer alone would be $118,000, and that it would take 6 to 8 weeks to complete. Further, the Government explained that due to the transfer, some user-created metadata would no longer be viewable or searchable, specifically including “(1) Database user actions (‘audit history’); (2) user searches including save search syntax; (3) image annotations; and (4) Database ‘artifacts’ such as batches, views, or layouts.” The defendants responded that they would “lose our saved searches compiled in files within the database, the very work that we have spent months and many hours putting together. These files essentially represent the virtual entirety of the defense work on the data base.”

Aside from these concerns, when asked when it first explained the possibility that the database could “wind down” before trial, the Government “could not point to a single instance where it had actually informed Defendants that this was a possibility.” Instead, the Government claimed that the “projected” two-year project duration should have been understood by the defendants to have been calculated based on the start of the project in June 2012, rather than the completion of the database as the defendants assumed.

Judge Vadas noted that if the Government had indicated that the database might be shut down prior to trial, and taken this position “when it broached the possibility of using the Database to manage discovery in this case, Defendants would have objected strenuously.” Ultimately, Judge Vadas found that since the Government had “chose to use an eDiscovery platform for this action, selected and managed the eDiscovery provider, and negotiated and agreed to Terms and Conditions for Access to the Database with the Defendants,” and that the Government had never disclosed that the database might wind down, “that winding down the Database before Defendants are ready for trial in December 2014 would prejudice Defendants' ability to prepare for trial and would offend the court's notion of fairness.” Therefore, the Government was ordered to continue to pay for the database through December 2014, and to continue providing the services agreed to in the Terms and Conditions.

So, what do you think? Should the Government have been required to continue to pay for the database, or should exporting it to a Concordance database for the defendants to use have been sufficient? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery at the Movies – eDiscovery Trends
 

While we don’t have Siskel & Ebert around to review movies anymore, there is a new documentary that will certainly merit review by many eDiscovery professionals out there.

The Decade of Discovery was written and directed by Joe Looby, who, according to his LinkedIn profile, served in the U.S. Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps, practiced as an environmental enforcement attorney for New York state and was a founder of the forensic technology practices at Deloitte and FTI.  His film production company is called 10th Mountain Films, named in honor of his father, who served in the 10th Mountain Division, a U.S. Army ski patrol that fought in World War II.

As noted in Law Technology News (E-Discovery Hits the Silver Screen, written by Monica Bay), Looby’s 61-minute film has already premiered last Saturday in Middletown, N.Y., at the  Hoboken International Film Festival and is also set to be shown at the Manhattan Film Festival on June 21.

Described as a “documentary about a government attorney on a quest to find a better way to search White House e-mail, and a teacher who takes a stand for civil justice on the electronic frontier”, Looby notes in a radio interview with the Mid Hudson News that the documentary includes comments by “a government attorney, a teacher, seven judges and two professors”, which includes several well-known names in eDiscovery: U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin, of the Southern District of New York, Jason R. Baron, former director of litigation for the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and now of counsel at Drinker Biddle & Reath, and Richard Braman, founder and executive director emeritus of The Sedona Conference, among others.  Looby refers to those who have advanced tremendous progress made over the past decade in eDiscovery practice as “true American heroes”.

Consider this:

  • When the President of the United States leaves office, White House emails generated during that president’s term cannot be released to the general public (via the US National Archives) until they are reviewed and declassified,
  • When Bill Clinton left office in 2001, there were 32 million emails to be reviewed and declassified,
  • That number rose to over 200 million emails when George W. Bush left office in 2009,
  • And is expected to rise to over 1 billion emails once Barack Obama leaves office at the end of his term.

The movie addresses the considerable advancements to address problems like this in both the government and litigation arenas.

Here is a link to the trailer for the movie – it looks very interesting and informative.  Hopefully, the movie will eventually be shown or available via a nationwide outlet (Netflix, anyone?) for those of us not in the Manhattan area.

So, what do you think? Is this a movie you would like to see? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Here’s a Chance to Help Shape the Future of Information Governance – eDiscovery Trends

Back on Valentine’s Day, we discussed the launching of the Information Governance Initiative (IGI), a cross-disciplinary consortium and think tank focused on advancing information governance.  The IGI has been busy, with two of its co-chairs, Bennett B. Borden & Jason R. Baron, having written a recent report on predictive analytics for information governance.  Now, the IGI is inviting you to help shape the future of information governance by participating in the IGI’s 2014 Annual Survey.

As noted on their blog, one of the IGI’s major projects this year is their 2014 (and first!) IGI Annual Report, “which will strive to provide much-needed clarity on IG concepts, definitions, markets, and practices”. As part of their research for the report, IGI is conducting a survey of information governance professionals.

As they note on their blog, the survey should take less than 15 minutes to complete (it took me about 10-12 minutes).  The survey asks a number of questions related to your role in information governance and how your organization handles IG, as well as questions regarding the future of information governance.  A link to the survey is available here.

According to Barclay Blair, founder & executive director of IGI, the deadline for taking the survey is June 15, with the results expected to be published on August 4.  Barclay also noted that IGI will also be reporting out on a series of benchmarking interviews that they are conducting right now with working IG practitioners.  Sounds like plenty of information to come!

With information governance clearly identified as the most widely discussed topic at this year’s LegalTech New York show (reflected by our recent thought leader interview series), the efforts of IGI will bear watching.  If you’re an information governance professional and want to make your voice heard, this survey is your chance!

So, what do you think? How does your organization handle information governance? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.