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eDiscoveryDaily

Freedom of Information? Not Necessarily for Text Messages: eDiscovery Trends

What percentage of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests actually result in receiving all of the information requested?  75 percent?  50 percent?  You might be surprised.  Apparently, according to a recent survey, one part of the problem could be the lack of capturing text messages within government organizations.

According to the 2018 Public Sector Text & Mobile Communications Survey from Smarsh, 70 percent of federal, state, county and city government organizations surveyed report allowing SMS/text for official business communication.  But, almost half of those (46 percent) are not formally capturing and retaining these messages.  There were 236 total respondents in the survey.

Here are some other interesting findings from the report:

  • The vast majority of agencies allow organizational email (97 percent) on mobile devices, but right behind it is SMS/text messaging, with 70 percent allowing it for official government business. Social channels Facebook and Twitter are the next most frequently cited, with 58 percent and 44 percent, respectively.
  • Two-thirds of surveyed organizations allow employees to use their own BYOD devices for official business, for those devices, only 35 percent of respondents are retaining SMS/text messages (as opposed to 62 percent for Corporate Owned Personally Enabled (COPE) devices).
  • The top four reasons SMS/Text records are NOT captured are: 1) Don’t currently have budget this year, 2) SMS/text isn’t required to be retained by law, 3) Waiting for Capstone/FOIA guidance, 4) Existing capture technologies are too complicated.
  • The majority of respondents, 62 percent or nearly 2/3, lacked confidence that they could provide specifically requested mobile text messages promptly if responding to a public records or litigation request.
  • Agencies with no retention solution in place have very little confidence in their ability to fulfill requests. 23 percent reported that if requested, it was unlikely they could produce SMS/text messages from their organizational leader at all.

When you hear these stats, you might be surprised the numbers aren’t higher.  Last year, Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation jumped 26 percent over the previous year. In 2018, that number is on track to increase again. While an average of 2.08 lawsuits were filed each day in 2017, 2018 has seen the average increase to 2.72 lawsuits per day.  Last year, there were 823,222 Federal FOIA requests – 78 percent of those requests yielded censored files or no records at all.  In other words, only 22 percent of FOIA requestors got everything they asked for.  22 percent!  And, the Federal government spent $40.6 million in legal fees defending its withholding of files in 2017.  Freedom of information isn’t free, apparently.

I guess it isn’t surprising that government agencies are struggling with the same challenges of collecting and keeping mobile device data that other organizations are.  Maybe we should conduct a webinar on the topic?  Does two weeks from today work for you?  :o)

So, what do you think?  Is your organization able to produce text messages from your employees if needed?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

P.S. — Happy Birthday, Carter!

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

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

Plaintiff Argument for Failure to Produce Cell Phone Data in Wife’s Name is “Unpersuasive”: eDiscovery Case Law

In Ortiz v. Amazon.com LLC, et al, No. 17-cv-03820-JSW (MEJ) (N.D. Cal. May 25, 2018), California Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James ordered the plaintiff, who failed to produce court-ordered cell phone records because the account was in his wife’s name and refused to provide her information, to provide defendant Golden State with his cell phone account holder’s name and address so that defendant could subpoena the cell phone records from her.  Judge James also ordered the plaintiff to appear for a deposition in San Francisco, as originally scheduled, instead of Los Angeles (where the plaintiff had moved).

Case Background

In this case on March 7, 2018, the Court ordered the plaintiff to produce his cell phone records to Golden State no later than April 6, 2018. The plaintiff stated these records were not in his possession or control, as the account for the phone records was in his non-party wife’s name.  The plaintiff claimed he had attempted to obtain the phone records by requesting them from the carrier, but was not authorized to do so, nor could he get them from his wife (the plaintiff didn’t explain why).  He did not inform Golden State that the cell phone records were in his wife’s name and thus unobtainable until April 27, 2018 – three weeks after the Court-ordered deadline for production.  The plaintiff also refused to provide his wife’s name and address to allow defendant Golden State to subpoena the records from her, despite his representations that he would do so by May 8 and 16.

Also, on January 25, 2018, defendant Golden State requested the plaintiff’s availability for deposition and, at the beginning of March, he confirmed his deposition would take place on April 23, 2018. On March 7, 2018, defendant Golden State served a Notice of Deposition that Plaintiff’s deposition would take place at defense counsel’s San Francisco office, but on April 19, 2018, Plaintiff cancelled the deposition because he moved to Los Angeles.

The plaintiff defendant Golden State filed two joint discovery dispute letters, from which the Court made its ruling.

Judge’s Ruling

In assessing the request for cell phone records, Judge James stated that “Plaintiff does not explain his delay in informing Golden State that the cell phone records are not in his possession or control. Plaintiff knew or should have known who is named on the account; he offers no reason why this information was not available to him prior to April 27. Plaintiff has known as early as September 18, 2017, and at the very latest, as of March 7, 2018, that he had to produce his phone records… Plaintiff states that, ‘[f]or personal reasons, Plaintiff wishes to maintain the details of his relationship status, and interactions with his wife, private.’…This argument is unpersuasive. By alleging Golden State failed to pay him for all hours worked and to provide him with meal and rest breaks, Plaintiff has placed his work day activities—including whether he made or received phone calls or text messages on his personal cell phone—at issue. Providing the account holder’s name and address reveals minimal details, if any, about Plaintiff’s marital status or interactions.”  As a result, Judge James ordered the plaintiff to provide defendant Golden State with his cell phone account holder’s name and address so that defendant could subpoena the cell phone records from her.

As for the deposition, Judge James ordered the deposition to be conducted in San Francisco, noting the fact that the plaintiff “did not inform Golden State that his relocation would cause difficulties until the eve of the deposition is not well taken” and rejecting the plaintiff’s proposed compromise to have one of Golden State counsel’s Los Angeles attorneys take the deposition in counsel’s Los Angeles office.  She also granted Golden State’s request for an order that “Plaintiff appear at his deposition before he can compel or proceed with depositions of Golden State’s witnesses”.

So, what do you think?  Do these seem like delay tactics or could the plaintiff have had a legitimate reason for failing to produce the cell phone records?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case opinion link courtesy of eDiscovery Assistant.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

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

Unsure About How to Map Your Data for GDPR? Here are Several Templates to Get Started: Data Privacy Best Practices

Now that Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is in effect, all organizations out there have a good handle on all of their data, including which personally identifiable information (PII) they handle for European data subjects out there and clear policies for how they ensure protection of that PII.  Right?  OK, maybe not.  If your organization is still scrambling to comply with GDPR and still trying to get a handle on the data you’re managing and the flow of that data, here is a site with several templates to help you get started in that process.

The site Demplates has templates for all sorts of things, including SWOT analysis templates (we wrote about the benefits of a SWOT analysis here), Certificates of Appreciation for employees, even Pest Control Service Agreements.  A couple of months ago (on my birthday, no less), the site posted GDPR Data Mapping Template: 10+ Print-Ready Templates, with several useful templates to help organizations create data maps, data flow diagrams, GDPR Data Processing Notices, privacy policy and data protection policy statements, data protection impact assessments and data audits.  The template documents are in different formats, including Excel, Word and Visio.  Here are pictures of a couple of examples:

With the challenges these days stemming from the growth of big data, data mapping is not only a good organization practice to not only help get a handle on your organization’s big data, but also to document your organization’s handling of PII and compliance with GDPR on the handling of PII.  Tom O’Connor and I talked about the importance of data mapping in our webcast on GDPR back in February (you can check it out here).  Data mapping supports in compliance and adherence to critical GDPR factors such as:

  • Maintenance of the data lifecycle;
  • Documentation that records are kept in adherence to the rules of GDPR to submit to the regulatory and supervising authorities;
  • Maintaining Accountability of the data for the full data lifecycle;
  • Evidence for the organization that the data is protected in its full cycle.

If you’re still scrambling to comply with GDPR, perhaps one or more of these templates can help you document your compliance or help you discover one or more areas where you may be deficient in your compliance.

So, what do you think?  Is your organization still trying to comply with GDPR?  Does your organization have an organization data map?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

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

Collecting Responsive ESI from Difficult Places: eDiscovery Webcasts

Happy June!  I don’t normally promote webcasts twice in one week, but this month’s webcast is a little earlier than normal.  What can I say, it’s family vacation season and my family has plans the last week of this month… :o)

Believe it or not, there was a time when collecting potentially responsive ESI from email systems for discovery was once considered overly burdensome. Now, it’s commonplace and much of it can be automated. But, that’s not where all of the responsive ESI resides today – much of it is on your mobile device, in social media platforms and even in Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Are you ignoring this potentially important data? Do you have to hire a forensics professional to collect this data or can you do much of it on your own?  We will discuss these and other questions in a webcast in a few weeks.

Wednesday, June 20th at noon CST (1:00pm EST, 10:00am PST), CloudNine will conduct the webcast Collecting Responsive ESI from Difficult Places. In this one-hour webcast that’s CLE-approved in selected states, we will discuss what lawyers need to know about the various sources of ESI today, examples of how those sources of data can be responsive to litigations and investigations, and how lawyers may be able to collect much of this data today using intuitive applications and simple approaches. Topics include:

  • Challenges from Various Sources of ESI Data
  • Ethical Duties and Rules for Understanding Technology
  • Key Case Law Related to Mobile Devices, Social Media and IoT
  • Options and Examples for Collecting from Mobile Devices
  • Options and Examples for Collecting from Social Media
  • Examples of IoT Devices and Collection Strategies
  • Recommendations for Addressing Collection Requirements
  • Resources for More Information

As always, I’ll be presenting the webcast, along with Tom O’Connor.  To register for it, click here.  Even if you can’t make it, go ahead and register to get a link to the slides and to the recording of the webcast (if you want to check it out later).  If you want to know how to collect electronically stored information from difficult places, this is the webcast for you!

So, what do you think?  Do you feel like you know when and how to collect ESI from mobile devices, social media and IoT devices?  If not, register for our webcast!  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily 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 Plaintiff Request for “Quick Peek” to Privilege Log, Proposing Special Master Review Instead: eDiscovery Case Law

In Winfield v. City of New York, No. 15-cv-05236, (S.D.N.Y. May 10, 2018), New York Magistrate Judge Katherine H. Parker, ruling on a debate of what constitutes privileged ESI,  denied the plaintiff’s request for a “quick peek” at 3,300 documents listed on the defendant’s privilege log, opting to propose instead for a special master to conduct a privilege review of those documents.

Case Background

In June 2017, the defendant moved for return of an accidentally produced privileged document under the agreed-upon procedures set forth in their Clawback Agreement, which then led to further discussion between the parties about the defendant’s privilege designations, with the plaintiffs believing the defendant over-designated documents as privileged.

In July 2017, the court directed the plaintiffs to identify a subset of 80 documents from the defendant’s privilege log that had been withheld on the basis of the deliberative process privilege. The court also ruled that “the defendant would have an opportunity to rereview the 80-document subset identified by Plaintiffs and determine whether it intended to maintain its privilege claim as to each document.”

After this review, the defendant maintained a claim of privilege over only 27 documents and withdrew its privilege designation for 51 document and produced them.  The Court subsequently ordered the City to submit all 80 documents to this Court for in camera review for purposes of assessing the validity of the initial and remaining privilege designations.

The plaintiffs also contested some of the defendant’s refusal to answer at depositions on the basis of attorney-client, work product, and/or deliberative process privilege and submitted a letter to the court seeking privilege rulings on 20 questions to which the City’s witnesses were directed not to respond. The defendant subsequently withdrew its privilege objections six of these questions and provided the plaintiffs with responses.

In February 2018, the court issued a lengthy ruling granting the defendant’s Clawback Demand and granting in part and denying in part the plaintiffs’ motion to compel production of certain documents from the sample set of documents designated as privileged by the defendant on its privilege log. The court also granted in part the plaintiffs’ motion to compel answers to questions posed during depositions. At the same time, the court directed the defendant to re-review its privilege designations, after which, the defendant de-designated certain documents as privileged and produced them.

In April 2018, the plaintiffs raised a concern with the volume (3,300 documents) designated by the defendant as privileged. The court then directed the parties to meet and confer concerning a proposal to address the plaintiffs’ concerns. At that meeting, the plaintiffs proposed the Court order the defendant to turn over all 3,300 documents designated as privileged for a “quick peek” at them, promising to review them in only a few weeks. The defendant, which had already spent significant time reviewing documents for privilege prior to producing them, vigorously objected.

Judge’s Ruling

After taking into consideration FRCP 26 and FRE 502, as well as previous case law, Judge Parker ruled:

“The task of reviewing 3,300 documents is enormous and one that this Court cannot complete before the end of fact discovery on July 31, 2018 given other demands in this and other cases. Appointment of a Special Master to conduct the privilege review pursuant to Rule 53 is therefore warranted…. In accordance with Rule 53(b)(1), the parties may file a letter regarding their position on the appointment of a Special Master, whether they have identified any conflict-of-interest issues… and suggest other candidates for appointment if they so desire…. Given the costs of a Special Master, Plaintiffs are directed to evaluate whether they can narrow the documents for review so as to reduce the time and thus the costs of the review.”

Judge Parker proposed the appointment of the Honorable Frank Maas (Ret.) of JAMS, who recently retired as a Magistrate Judge in the District and was available to conduct a review (and was recently proposed for a privilege review in another high-profile case).  Judge Parker indicated that “the parties may file a letter regarding their position on the appointment of a Special Master, whether they have identified any conflict-of-interest issues that would preclude appointment of Judge Maas, and suggest other candidates for appointment if they so desire.”

So, what do you think? Is the appointment of a special master to perform the privilege review the right ruling? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case opinion link courtesy of eDiscovery Assistant.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

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

Today is the Day for eDiscovery for the Rest of Us!: eDiscovery Webcasts

Does it seem like eDiscovery technology today is only for the “mega-firms” and “mega-cases”? What about for the “rest of us”? Are there solutions for the small firms and cases too? What does the average lawyer need to know about eDiscovery today and how to select a solution that’s right for them?  Find out in our webcast today!

Today at noon CST (1:00pm EST, 10:00am PST), CloudNine will conduct the webcast eDiscovery for the Rest of Us. In this one-hour webcast that’s CLE-approved in selected states, we will discuss what lawyers need to know about eDiscovery, the various sources of data to consider, and the types of technology solutions to consider to make an informed decision and get started using technology to simplify the discovery process. Topics include:

  • How Automation is Affecting All Industries, including eDiscovery
  • Drivers for eDiscovery Automation Today
  • Challenges from Various Sources of ESI Data
  • Ethical Duties and Rules for Managing Discovery
  • Getting Data Through the Process Efficiently
  • Small Case Examples: Ernie and EDna
  • Key Components of an eDiscovery Solution
  • Types of Tools to Consider
  • Recommendations for Getting Started

As always, I’ll be presenting the webcast, along with Tom O’Connor, who wrote a four part blog post series that we have published on the blog in the past couple of weeks.  To register for it, click here.  Even if you can’t make it, go ahead and register to get a link to the slides and to the recording of the webcast (if you want to check it out later).  If you want to know what eDiscovery solution options there within an affordable budget, this is the webcast for you!

So, what do you think?  Do you feel like you can’t afford eDiscovery technology?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily 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 Grants Adverse Inference Sanction Against Infringing Author: eDiscovery Case Law

In Nunes v. Rushton, No. 2:14-cv-00627-JNP-DBP (D. Utah May 14, 2018), Utah District Judge Jill N. Parrish, ruling that the plaintiff was prejudiced by the deletion of one of the defendant’s Google “sock puppet” accounts, granted the plaintiff’s motion for sanctions in part, ordering an adverse instruction to the jury regarding the “bad faith” deletion of that account.  Judge Parrish denied the motion with regard to several other accounts, ruling that the plaintiff was not prejudiced by deletion of those accounts (as most of the information was still available or recoverable).

Case Background

In this case, the defendant infringed the plaintiff’s copyright in her novel by copying protected elements of the book and distributing copies of the infringing work to reviewers and bloggers for promotional purposes. Around this time, the defendant created a number of “sock puppet” accounts on Google and Yahoo by registering these accounts under usernames that did not identify her as the individual controlling the accounts and used these accounts to create several sock puppet accounts on Facebook, Goodreads, and Amazon. The defendant then used the Goodreads and Amazon sock puppet accounts to post positive reviews of her own books and negative reviews of the plaintiff’s books. The defendant also created a Twitter account and a Blogspot account under her pen name to promote her books.

In August 2014, the plaintiff became aware of the potential infringement, attempted to obtain an advance copy of the infringing novel and discover the true identity of the defendant’s pen name. The defendant used her sock puppet social media accounts to anonymously criticize the plaintiff’s efforts to investigate the infringing novel. Sometime in August or September of 2014, after the plaintiff had discovered the defendant’s identity, The defendant deleted most of her sock puppet accounts. The defendant also deleted her pen name Twitter and Blogspot accounts. The plaintiff filed this lawsuit on August 28, 2014.

During litigation, the plaintiff made a discovery request for documents stored on the defendant’s various Google and Yahoo accounts. On August 12, 2015, while this discovery request was pending, the defendant deleted one of her Google sock puppet accounts.  When the court granted a motion to compel the defendant to produce documents from her Google and Yahoo accounts, counsel for the defendant represented that she had lost the passwords to the accounts, leading to subpoenas to those services.  The defendant deleted all of the remaining accounts on March 21, 2016, asserting that she did so because she believed that all of the documents associated with the accounts had been or would be produced by Google and Yahoo pursuant to the subpoenas.  Google stated that the account deleted on August 12, 2015 could not be recovered because too much time had passed, but preserved the accounts that had been deleted on March 21, 2016.

Judge’s Ruling

In analyzing the defendants’ motion, Judge Parrish denied the motion for sanctions regarding most of the accounts, determining that the plaintiff suffered no prejudice because the information pertaining to those accounts either remained, was saved by the plaintiff before the accounts were deleted or could be recovered by Google and Yahoo.

As for the August 12, 2015 deletion of one of the Google accounts, Judge Parrish stated: “At the time of the deletion, Rushton had a duty to preserve this account because litigation was pending. The court also finds that Nunes was prejudiced by the deletion because any documents or emails stored on this account were irretrievably lost… Given that litigation had been pending for almost a year, that Rushton was represented by counsel, and that Nunes had requested the production of documents associated with this Google account, the court infers that Rushton’s August 12, 2015 deletion of one of her Google accounts was done in bad faith.”

As a result, Judge Parrish ordering an adverse instruction to the jury regarding the “bad faith” deletion of that account.

So, what do you think?  Was an advance inference sanction a severe enough punishment?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case opinion link courtesy of eDiscovery Assistant.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

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

EDRM Needs Your Input on its TAR Guidelines: eDiscovery Best Practices

I’m here in Durham, NC at the annual EDRM Spring Workshop at Duke Law School and, as usual, the Workshop is a terrific opportunity to discuss the creation of standards and guidelines for the legal community, as well as network with like minded people on eDiscovery topics.  I’ll have more to report about this year’s Workshop next week.  But, one part of the Workshop that I will touch on now is the release of the public comment version of EDRM’s Technology Assisted Review (TAR) Guidelines.

Last Friday, EDRM released the preliminary draft of its TAR Guidelines for public comment (you can download it here).  EDRM and the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law are seeking comments from the bench, bar, and public on a preliminary draft of Technology Assisted Review (TAR) Guidelines. Nearly 50 volunteer lawyers, e-discovery experts, software developers, scholars and judges worked on this draft under the auspices of EDRM. A version of the document was presented at the Duke Distinguished Lawyers’ conference on Technology Assisted Review, held Sept. 7-8, 2017. At that event, 15 judges and nearly 100 lawyers and practitioners provided feedback and comments on the draft. The document was further revised based on discussions at that conference, additional review by judges and additional review by EDRM members over the past couple of months (which involved significant changes and a much tighter and briefer guideline document). With the assistance of four law student fellows of the Bolch Judicial Institute, this draft was finalized in May 2018 for public comment.

So, calling this a preliminary draft is a bit of a misnomer as it has already been through several iterations of review and edit.  Now, it’s the public’s turn.

EDRM states that “Comments on this preliminary draft will be carefully considered by the drafting team and an advisory group of judges as they finalize the document for publication. Please send comments on this draft, whether favorable, adverse, or otherwise, as soon as possible, but no later than Monday, July 16, 2018. Comments must be submitted in tracked edits (note: the guidelines are in a Word document for easy ability to track changes) and submitted via email to edrm@law.duke.edu. All comments will be made available to the public.”

That’s all well and good and EDRM will hopefully get a lot of useful feedback on the guideline document.  However, one thing I have observed about public comment periods is that the people who tend to provide comments (i.e., geeks like us who attend EDRM workshops) are people who already understand TAR (and think they know how best to explain it to others).  If the goal of the EDRM TAR guidelines is to help the general bench and bar better understand TAR, then it’s important for the average attorney to review the document and provide comments as to how useful it is.

So, if you’re an attorney or legal technology practitioner who doesn’t understand TAR, I encourage (even challenge) you to review these guidelines and provide feedback.  Point out what you learned from the document and what was confusing and whether or not you feel that you have a better understanding of TAR and the considerations for when to use it and where it can be used.  Ask yourself afterward if you have a better idea of how to get started using TAR and if you understand the difference between TAR approaches.  If these guidelines can help a lot of members of the legal profession better understand TAR, that will be the true measure of its effectiveness.

Oh, and by the way, Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation is now in effect!  Are you ready?  If not, you might want to check out this webcast.

So, what do you think?  Will these guidelines help the average attorney or judge better understand TAR?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily 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 for the Rest of Us: eDiscovery Best Practices, Part Four

Editor’s Note: Tom O’Connor is a nationally known consultant, speaker, and writer in the field of computerized litigation support systems.  He has also been a great addition to our webinar program, participating with me on several recent webinars.  Tom has also written several terrific informational overview series for CloudNine, including eDiscovery and the GDPR: Ready or Not, Here it Comes (which we covered as a webcast), Understanding eDiscovery in Criminal Cases (which we also covered as a webcast), ALSP – Not Just Your Daddy’s LPO and Why Is TAR Like a Bag of M&M’s?. Now, Tom has written another terrific overview regarding eDiscovery for the smaller cases titled eDiscovery for the Rest of Us that we’re happy to share on the eDiscovery Daily blog (and will cover later this month in a webcast).  Enjoy! – Doug

Tom’s overview is split into four parts, so we’ll cover each part separately.  Part One was published last Tuesday, Part Two was published last Thursday and Part Three was published on Tuesday.  Here’s the final part, Part Four.

The EDna Challenge, 2016

In 2016, Craig Ball revisited the Edna challenge with a new set of parameters and a panel at the annual ILTA conference on which I was privileged to be a participant. The panel sought what Craig called “… a re-examination of EDna options circa 2016 on a bigger budget.” https://craigball.net/2016/04/15/edna-still-cheap-and-challenged/ .

In this new challenge, Edna had a Zip file on a thumb drive containing collected ESI in various formats: 10 custodians with ESI PSTs for six of them, four MBOX take outs from Gmail for the other four and a combination of  word processed documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoint documents, PDFs and a few scanned paper documents for all ten. She estimated the contents will unzip to about 10-12 GB with somewhere between 50,000 to 100, 000 documents total.

The goal was to conduct a paperless privilege and responsiveness review of the material in-house, sharing the task with an associate and legal assistant.  All staff had high-end, big screen desktop PC running Windows 8.1 with MS Office 2016 and Adobe Acrobat 11 Pro installed and the office’s network file server had ample space for the document collection.

The specific goals were:

  • Efficient workflow
  • Robust search
  • Ability to process relevant metadata
  • Simple document tagging and production identification
  • Effective tracked deduplication
  • Review may take up to 90 days, and the case may not conclude for up to two years.  All review, hosting and production costs must be borne by the budget.

Edna didn’t own a review tool and was willing to spend up to $5,000.00 total for software, vendor services, SaaS, etc.  Craig’s only restrictions on responses were “She won’t spend a penny more.  You can’t loan her your systems or software.  You can’t talk her out of it.  Pricing must mirror real-world availability, not a special deal.”

The good news was that the increase in budget accompanied by the shift to Web based solutions made a dramatic change in the responses. As one independent analyst noted, if kept to 3 months hosting, more than 70% of the companies he worked with could meet the challenge. Brad Jenkins, CEO of CloudNine (the host of this article) noted that the CloudNine software would allow Edna  “… access to a complete eDiscovery platform for processing, review, and production. She can upload her data for automated native processing, review her data in CloudNine’s integrated review tool, and produce her data in almost any format.”  All for under the limit of the challenge.

What’s Next?

The next step in the market of technology for the rest of us is growth of Internet based tools.  We are now seeing even more budget conscious solutions in a SaaS environment, solutions that work with common native format files where you host your own data with programs installed locally that are able to accommodate smaller data collections.

Some of these are well-established companies such as Relativity or Ipro Tech and others are newer companies such as CloudNine, Digital War Room, Logikcull, CS Disco and Everlaw. Some of them also incorporate some form of front-end analytics to significantly reduce the amount of data to be processed as well as TAR or predictive coding technology to enable faster review of documents.

Conclusion

But the ultimate solution is more than just knowing the rules, avoiding e-jargon and understanding the technology. In our estimation, it is the process not the technology.

We are not alone in this appraisal. Technologist John Martin once commented, “It’s the archer not the arrow.” Craig Ball says, “The key consideration is workflow”.

The fact is that technology is not the key to successful management of e-discovery in small cases. Rather, the single most effective way to keep eDiscovery costs low is to work with your opposition in a cooperative manner so you can stipulate to the use of low cost solutions.

We all must change to the new paradigm of working in the digital world. In the words of The Hon. Lee Rosenthal, former Chair of the Standing Committee of the Judicial Conference, “Litigation habits and customs learned in the days of paper must be revisited and revised. The culture of bench and bar must adjust.”

Craig Ball described it as “throwing down the gauntlet in the Edna Challenge when he said, “So, how about it e-discovery industry? Can you divert your gaze from the golden calf long enough to see the future and recall the past? Sam Walton became the richest man of his era by selling to more for less. There’s a fast-growing need…and a huge emerging market.  The real Edna Challenge is waiting for the visionaries who will meet the need and serve this market.”

I think we’re very close to being there.

So, what do you think?  Do smaller litigation cases get shortchanged when it comes to eDiscovery technology?  As always, please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

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