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eDiscoveryDaily

Want Some Tips on How to Prepare for the Rule 26(f) Meet and Confer? Join us Today!: eDiscovery Best Practices

Not only are the first days after a complaint is filed critical to managing the eDiscovery requirements of the case efficiently and cost-effectively, you need to do some prep even before the case is filed. With a scheduling order required within 120 days of the complaint and a Rule 26(f) “meet and confer” conference required at least 21 days before that, there’s a lot to do and a short time to do it. Where do you begin?  Find out today!

But first, I’m excited to report that eDiscovery Daily has been nominated to participate in The Expert Institute’s Best Legal Blog Contest in the Legal Tech category!  Thanks to whoever nominated us!  If you enjoy our blog, you can vote for it and help it win a spot in their Best Legal Blogs Hall of Fame.  You can cast a vote for our blog here.  Thanks!

Anyway, today at noon CST (1:00pm EST, 10:00am PST), CloudNine will conduct the webcast Holy ****, The Case is Filed! What Do I Do Now? (yes, that’s the actual title). In this one-hour webcast, we’ll take a look at the various issues to consider and decisions to be made to help you “get your ducks in a row” and successfully prepare for the Rule 26(f) “meet and confer” conference within the first 100 days after the case is filed. Topics include:

  • What You Should Consider Doing before a Case is Even Filed
  • Scoping the Discovery Effort
  • Identifying Employees Likely to Have Potentially Responsive ESI
  • Mapping Data within the Organization
  • Timing and Execution of the Litigation Hold
  • Handling of Inaccessible Data
  • Guidelines for Interviewing Custodians
  • Managing ESI Collection and Chain of Custody
  • Search Considerations and Preparation
  • Handling and Clawback of Privileged and Confidential Materials
  • Determining Required Format(s) for Production
  • Timing of Discovery Deliverables and Phased Discovery
  • Identifying eDiscovery Liaison and 30(b)(6) Witnesses
  • Available Resources and Checklists

I’ll be presenting the webcast, along with Tom O’Connor, who is now a Special Consultant to CloudNine!  If you follow our blog, you’re undoubtedly familiar with Tom as a leading eDiscovery thought leader (who we’ve interviewed several times over the years) and I’m excited to have Tom as a participant in this webcast!  To register for it, click here.  Even if you can’t make it today, 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).

So, what do you think?  When a case is filed, do you have your eDiscovery “ducks in a row”?  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. 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.

Rule 502(d) Orders for Non-Waiver of Privilege: eDiscovery Best Practices

Tomorrow, Tom O’Connor and I will discuss the various issues to consider and decisions to be made to help you meet your discovery obligations in an efficient and proportional manner when preparing for the Rule 26(f) conference in the webcast Holy****, The Case is Filed! What Do I Do Now? (noon CT, click here to register for the webcast or to get a link to access the slides and video afterward).  One of the topics relates to an order you can file to avoid non-waiver of privilege for inadvertent disclosures (click here and here for recent examples of cases where information was inadvertent disclosed).  If you missed it before, let’s revisit the topic now.

A couple of years ago, LegalTech New York (LTNY) had several judges’ panel sessions that included several notable judges, including Judge Andrew J. Peck.  In each of those sessions, you heard this question from Judge Peck at one point during the session.

“How many of you use Federal Rule of Evidence 502(d) non-waiver orders?  Or, if you’re inside counsel, (how many) instruct your outside counsel to do so?”

For those who don’t know, here is the text of FRCP Rule 502(d): “Controlling Effect of a Court Order. A federal court may order that the privilege or protection is not waived by disclosure connected with the litigation pending before the court — in which event the disclosure is also not a waiver in any other federal or state proceeding.”

In one of the sessions, Judge Peck discussed the significance of Rule 502(d), as follows: “it is a rule that says you don’t have to be careful, you don’t have to show that you’ve done a careful privilege screening, and it says that if the court enters a 502(d) order, it’s a non-waiver of privilege in that case and it’s a non-waiver of privilege in any subsequent state or federal case, even with different parties.”

While making it clear that “I’m never saying that you shouldn’t be as careful as possible to protect your client’s privilege”, Judge Peck related a story of one case where a firm had a potentially privileged group of documents and the associate was reviewing the documents late at night, creating two piles – one for privileged, one for not privileged – got up to get a drink, came back and got the piles mixed up, resulting in privileged documents being inadvertently produced.  Naturally, he said, the other side “didn’t just let them off the hook” about whether that waived the privilege or not and there were motions back and forth about it, which a 502(d) order would have eliminated.

With regard to any potential downsides to filing a 502(d) order, Judge Peck made it clear that “in my mind, there is no downside to having such an order”, noting that the only downside he has heard is that “if you’re before the wrong judge, the famous Neanderthal judge that everyone worries about, that judge might say that you need to produce all your documents next week and you don’t need to do a privilege review.”  But, he dismissed that as unlikely and, noted that it is “against the rules”.

Judge Peck doesn’t just advocate use of 502(d) orders, he has provided a sample order on his page in the Southern District of New York web site, noting that “it’s a simple two paragraph order – the first paragraph gives you the 502(d) protection to the fullest extent and the second paragraph essentially says that nothing in this order will serve to prevent you from doing a careful review for privilege, confidentiality or anything else.”  He acknowledged that he “stole that paragraph from a lawyer presenting at the Georgetown conference a few years ago”.

Judge Peck also mentioned The Sedona Conference Commentary on the Protection of Privileged ESI (released three years ago, it can be downloaded here), which not only includes his sample order, but another (longer) example as well.

So, what do you think?  Do you use 502(d) orders in your cases?  If not, why not?  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. 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.

When You Have a Lot of Custodians, Life Can Be a Batch: eDiscovery Best Practices

After Tom O’Connor and I hosted the webcast On Premise or Off Premise? A Look At Security Approaches to eDiscovery where we discussed the pros and cons of on premise and off premise (i.e., cloud) solutions last month (click here to check out the recording of it), I received a question from an attendee afterward, as follows: Isn’t another advantage of on premise solutions the ability to load large amounts of data from multiple custodians (i.e., multiple terabytes) to the eDiscovery platform?

Not necessarily.  For starters, not all cloud solution architectures are the same.  There are public cloud and private/protected cloud alternatives.  With a public cloud solution, the servers are controlled by the cloud provider (such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure), not by the eDiscovery provider.  Those servers could be located anywhere (even internationally), so loading data would typically be through File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or Secured File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) and would be reliant on your bandwidth and the bandwidth of the cloud provider.  Loading multiple terabytes to a public cloud solution could be extremely time consuming, perhaps excessively so.

In a private/protected cloud alternative, the servers are located in a data center controlled by the eDiscovery provider (and probably close by their offices).  To load multiple terabytes in that scenario doesn’t require FTP or SFTP, the provider can actually connect a drive provided by the client and copy the data up.  So, that is an alternative that can be essentially as fast as that of an on premise solution (because it is essentially on premise once the drive is received by the provider).

Does that mean it’s impossible to load large amounts of data to a cloud eDiscovery solution?  Not at all, if you effectively manage the data loading in multiple batches.  At CloudNine (shameless plug warning!), I can recall at least two recent clients within the past year or so that had a case with numerous (i.e., more than a hundred) custodians and those clients needed to get email stores (which had been exported out to Outlook PST files) loaded into our platform.  Because clients can load their own data (and because they didn’t check with us to see if there were faster alternatives), these two clients proceeded to load the data for their numerous custodians in multiple batches.  Because the load process is multi-threaded, they could have multiple batches going at once.

Each of the two collections was in excess of 3.5 terabytes (one was nearly 4 terabytes, at 3.92 TB), yet both clients were able to effectively get their data processed and loaded to get started on searching and review within their required time frame.

So, when considering eDiscovery solution alternatives that include cloud based solutions, it’s important to understand which are public cloud solutions and which are private/protected cloud solutions and what that means to you.  It’s also important to understand how data can be processed and loaded and whether the load process is multi-threaded.  And, it’s important to understand the pros and cons of on premise and off premise solutions to help you decide (Tom and I covered both in the webcast linked to at the top of the post).  Depending on your requirements, a combination of both on premise and off premise may be appropriate to meet your needs.

So, what do you think?  Do you use on-premise, off-premise or a combination for your eDiscovery solution(s)? 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. 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 Adds Some of the Custodians Requested by Plaintiffs to Discovery, But Not All: eDiscovery Case Law

In Mann, et al. v. City of Chicago, et al, Nos. 15 CV 9197, 13 CV 4531 (N.D. Ill. Sep. 8, 2017), Illinois Magistrate Judge Mary M. Rowland granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs’ Motion to Compel the defendant to include certain custodians in their email search, ordering the defendant to search emails of five additional custodians (including the Mayor of Chicago), but not requiring the defendant to search emails for an additional three custodians requested by the plaintiff.  Judge Rowland also denied the plaintiffs’ request for sanctions, finding that the defendant’s conduct was not sanctionable.

Case Background

In this consolidated case involving alleged unconstitutional Chicago police (CPD) practices at “off the grid” facilities (including one known as “Homan Square”), the parties agreed on several discovery related items, including search terms and the majority of custodians.  The parties also agree that discovery would include the Mayor’s Office, but “reached an impasse” on which custodians in the Mayor’s Office should be searched, with the plaintiffs’ arguing that Mayor Emanuel and ten members of his senior staff were relevant to the plaintiffs’ Monell claim.  In response, the defendant argued that the plaintiffs’ request was burdensome, and that the plaintiffs “have failed to provide any grounds to believe that the proposed custodians were involved with CPD’s policies and practices at Homan Square”, proposing instead that it search the two members of the Mayor’s staff responsible for liasoning with the CPD and leave “the door open for additional custodians” depending on the results of that search.

Judge’s Ruling

With regard to the parties’ dispute over whether the Mayor was a “policymaker” for the City with regard to the use of the Homan Square facility, Judge Rowland stated: “On summary judgment or at trial, Plaintiffs will have to provide evidence that ‘the unlawful practice was so pervasive that acquiescence on the part of policymakers was apparent and amounted to a policy decision’ or that a policymaking official responsible for final government policy on the police practices at issue directed the particular conduct that caused Plaintiffs’ harm…But at this stage Plaintiffs do not have to establish that the Mayor was a policymaker or had final authority on the police practices at issue or that there is a ‘nexus’ between the custodians of the emails and CPD’s alleged activities at Homan Square.”

Judge Rowland also noted that the defendant had identified the two custodians “as the most likely holders of responsive emails…But in light of the allegations in the complaint, the Mayor and his upper level staff also might have responsive emails.”  She also rejected the defendant’s argument that the additional custodians would be burdensome, noting that “[t]he City does not offer any specifics or even a rough estimate about the burden.”

As a result, Judge Rowland ordered the defendant to search emails of five additional custodians (including the Mayor of Chicago), but did not require the defendant to search emails for an additional four custodians requested by the plaintiff “because of the short tenure of the staff person or the time during which the person held the position”.  She also denied the plaintiffs’ request for sanctions against the defendant, stating: “The Court does not view the City’s conduct as sanctionable and both parties’ diligent efforts to work together shows that ‘other circumstances make an award of expenses unjust.’”

So, what do you think?  Might the defendant have had a better result if it had provided at least an estimate of the burden?  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.

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.

To No One’s Surprise, Worldwide Spending on Cybersecurity is Up: Cybersecurity Trends

Can you guess what the global spend on cybersecurity will be this year?  Gartner recently provided a forecast, see how close you can come to guessing the amount.  The answer is at the bottom of this post – the picture of this well-known astronomer should provide some clue.

In their press release from August announcing the forecast and report (I would quote the title, but that would give away the answer), Gartner forecasted fast growth in the security testing market (albeit from a small base) due to continued data breaches and growing demands for application security testing as part of DevOps. Spending on emerging application security testing tools, particularly interactive application security testing (IAST), will contribute to the growth of this segment through 2021.  So, if you want to get into a career growth area, security testing sounds like a good one.

Gartner says that security services will continue to be the fastest growing segment, especially IT outsourcing, consulting and implementation services. However, hardware support services will see growth slowing, due to the adoption of virtual appliances, public cloud and software as a service (SaaS) editions of security solutions, which reduces the need for attached hardware support overall.

Another factor that will lead to increases in security spend, according to Gartner: The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has created renewed interest, and will drive 65 percent of data loss prevention buying decisions today through 2018 (not to mention some eDiscovery buying decisions too).  And, if you don’t think your firm or organization is subject to GDPR, you may want to read this.

However, by 2021, Gartner reports that more than 80 percent of large businesses in China will deploy network security equipment from a local vendor.  China’s recently approved cybersecurity law will contribute to further displacement of U.S.-manufactured network security products with local Chinese vendors. Despite an increase of 24 percent in 2016, Gartner expects end-user spending growth in Asia/Pacific to return to single-digit yearly growth from 2018 onward, as a result of a decline in average selling prices (ASPs), due to the more competitive pricing of Chinese solutions.

So, how big is the global cybersecurity market?  According to Gartner, worldwide spending on information security products and services will reach $86.4 billion in 2017, an increase of 7 percent over 2016, with spending expected to grow to $93 billion in 2018.  In other words, “billions and billions” as famous astronomer Carl Sagan was known to say.

More detailed analysis is available to Gartner clients in these two reports: Forecast Analysis: Information Security, Worldwide, 1Q17 Update and It’s Time to Align Your Vulnerability Management Priorities With the Biggest Threats.

So, what do you think?  Has your organization increased spending on cybersecurity products and services? 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. 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.

Lucky Seven! eDiscovery Daily is Seven Years Old!

Believe it or not, it has been seven years ago today since we launched the eDiscovery Daily blog!

We launched seven years ago on September 20, 2010.  Back then, we told you to not get “wild” with wildcards and published our first case law post about a case where the spoliator of data was actually threatened with jail time –  our first of 575 posts about case law to date, covering more than 400 distinct cases!  We’ve published over 1,800 lifetime posts, and every post is still available on the site for your reference.

As always, we have you to thank for all of that success!  Thanks for making the eDiscovery Daily blog a regular resource for your eDiscovery news and analysis!  We really appreciate the support!

As many of you know by now, we like to take a look back every six months at some of the important stories and topics during that time.  So, here are some posts over the last six months you may have missed.  Enjoy!

When you are ordered to provide “five detailed search terms” to the court, providing 72 spelling variations on those terms might be a bit much.

Oh, and if you put information on a file share site without a password, you might have waived privilege.

Ten years later, The Sedona Principles are new and improved.

In a divorce case, metadata can thwart your efforts to forge signed agreements with your spouse.

And, if you try boilerplate objections with this judge again, EXPECT SANCTIONS.

This guy says that failing to preserve mobile devices in litigation is malpractice.

Believe it or not, the Internet is even busier than last year.

If you want to murder your wife, her Fitbit could prove your undoing.

In this case, SCOTUS weighed in on fee awards for discovery misconduct.

Should you perform keyword search before TAR?  This court says no.

Should Rule 37(e) apply when a party intentionally deletes ESI?  This court says no.

Should courts specify search terms for parties to use?  This court says yes – for the second time.

Is pricing transparency finally happening in eDiscovery?  You decide.

Can producing in native format be burdensome?  And, will a court agree?

Did you know over 80% of hacking related breaches are related to password issues?  Well, no wonder, this retired NIST expert says his advice on creating passwords was wrong.

If your data is in the cloud, it is likely still within your “possession, custody, or control” for litigation purposes.

Are organizations more likely to use an on-premises solution than a cloud-based solution?  Here are the results of one survey.

As an eDiscovery provider, here’s how I might have avoided the Wells Fargo inadvertent disclosure.

This social media request by the defendant is reasonably calculated to illustrate the defendant’s lack of knowledge on the current rules.

Even large government entities can make the most fundamental mistakes when it comes to applying redactions.

This is just a sampling of topics that we’ve covered.  Hope you enjoyed them!

Thanks for the interest you’ve shown in the topics!  We will do our best to continue to provide interesting and useful eDiscovery news and analysis.  And, as always, please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic!  On to 8 years and 2,000 lifetime posts!  :o)

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.

Google Goes 0 For 2 in its Request for Review of SCA Warrant Cases: eDiscovery Case Law

As Tom O’Connor and I discussed last week in our ACEDS webinar Key eDiscovery Case Law Review for First Half of 2017 (here’s a link if you missed it), Google was ordered earlier this year to produce foreign stored emails by judges in California and Pennsylvania in response to government warrants.  Last month, Google’s request for review on the two cases (and interpretation of Section 2703 of the Stored Communications Act of 1986) didn’t change the results.

With regard to In re Search Warrant No. 16-960-M-1 to Google; In re Search Warrant No. 16-1061-M to Google, MJ Nos. 16-960, 16-1061 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 17, 2017), Pennsylvania District Judge Juan R. Sànchez considered Pennsylvania Magistrate Judge Thomas J. Rueter’s February ruling which ordered Google to comply with a search warrant to produce foreign-stored emails, disagreeing with the Second Circuit’s ruling in the Microsoft Ireland warrant case, where Microsoft was not ordered to provide access to emails in that ruling.  In considering Google’s request to review Judge Rueter’s order, Judge Sànchez stated:

“The issue in this case is whether enforcing the SCA warrants in question to require Google to produce communications and other subscriber data stored on servers located outside the United States constitutes an extraterritorial application of the statute. In analyzing this issue, the Court starts with the presumption against extraterritoriality, “a longstanding principle of American law ‘that legislation of Congress, unless a contrary intent appears, is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.’””

With that in mind, Judge Sànchez, in upholding the Magistrate Court decision, ruled that “Even if the steps taken by a provider to search for, access, and retrieve subscriber communications for eventual disclosure to the government were conduct relevant to § 2703’s focus, this Court has considerable difficulty with Google’s assertion that, where the communications in question are stored in foreign data centers, the ‘vast majority’ of this conduct occurs outside of the United States…By Google’s own account, the search and retrieval process consists of a series of queries initiated by Google personnel in the United States to which servers in the targeted data centers respond….While these queries may be run on servers in Google’s foreign data centers, it is difficult to see how this amounts to conduct by Google at the location of the data center, given that the United States-based employees direct the search and retrieval process remotely, without involvement by any personnel located abroad…That the subscriber’s communications are accessed only by—and can be accessed only by—Google personnel in the United States, and are produced by such personnel in the United States, reinforces the conclusion that the only conduct involved in the search and retrieval process occurs domestically.”

With regard to In the Matter of the Search of Content Stored at Premises Controlled by Google Inc. and as Further Described in Attachment A, No. 16-mc-80263-RS (N.D. Cal. Aug. 14, 2017), Google moved for de novo review of California Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ‘s determination “the disclosure is a domestic application of the SCA.”  California District Judge Richard Seeborg, in considering the same issues, ruled:

“As to the question of whether Google is undertaking essential aspects of compliance with section 2703 outside the United States, the answer is no. As a factual matter, the information sought by the government is easily and lawfully accessed in the United States, and disclosure of that content would likewise take place in the United States. Indeed, only personnel in Google’s Legal Investigations Support team are authorized to access the content of communications in order to produce it in response to legal process and all such Google personnel are located in the United States…Accordingly, the conduct relevant to the SCA’s focus occurs in the United States.”

I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of either of these cases yet, just like it appears we haven’t heard the last of the Microsoft Ireland warrant case yet either.

So, what do you think?  Should the location of the data or the location of the searches for the data determine whether it is subject to foreign data privacy considerations? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case opinion links courtesy of eDiscovery Assistant.

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.

“Primed” to Learn About Rule 34 of the FRCP? Here’s a New Primer from The Sedona Conference: eDiscovery Best Practices

As Tom O’Connor and I discussed last week in our ACEDS webinar Key eDiscovery Case Law Review for First Half of 2017 (here’s a link if you missed it), we’re seeing lots of cases that relate to disputes associated with Rule 34 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and disputes over things such as scope of production and proportionality, form of production and the handling of objections.  Now, The Sedona Conference® (TSC) Working Group on Electronic Document Retention & Production (WG1) has issued a public comment version of a new primer on Rule 34.

As noted in the Preface, the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34 Primer stems from the December 2015 changes to Rule 34, which were intended to address systemic problems in how discovery requests and responses traditionally were handled, and the observation that, over a year later, despite numerous articles, training programs, and conferences about the changes, their implementation had been mixed, at best. Along the way, several courts issued firmly-worded opinions admonishing practitioners against continuing to use overly-broad, non-particularized requests for production and unhelpful, boilerplate objections. These opinions made clear that there would be consequences for those who continue to rely on their pre-December 2015 practices, templates, boilerplate objections, and forms. In short, this Primer aims to meet the need for a framework and guidance on how to comply with the requirements of amended Rule 34.

WG1 has prepared this Rule 34 Primer with practice pointers on how to comply with the amended Rules, and it gathers advice and observations from: (1) requesting and responding parties who have successfully implemented them; and (2) legal decisions interpreting the amended Rules. Judicial opinions issued to date have given a clearer picture on how the amendments will be interpreted and implemented by the bench, and, as noted in the Introduction, any practitioner that does not adapt their practice to incorporate these amendments “does so at his or her own risk”.

After the Introduction, the Rule 34 Primer covers the 2015 Rules Amendments to Rule 34 and then the bulk of the document covers practice pointers for conferences by the parties, requests for production, responses to requests to production, court involvement and requesting and responding parties’ obligations under Rule 26(g).  The Rule 34 Primer also includes two appendices: Cases Interpreting the Specificity Requirements in Rule 34 and State Law Equivalents and Standing Orders, Guidelines, and Checklists Regarding Requests for Production and Responses to Those Requests.  The entire downloadable PDF file is a mere 29 pages, so it’s reasonably compact.

To download the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34 Primer, click here.  As always, it’s free!

And, as this is a public comment edition, WG1 encourages Working Group Series members and others to spread the word and share this link so they can get comments in before the public comment period closes on November 15, 2017 (done! – you’re welcome…). Questions and comments regarding the Primer before then can be sent to comments@sedonaconference.org.

So, what do you think?  Have you encountered any cases recently with “overly-broad, non-particularized requests for production” or “unhelpful, boilerplate objections”? 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. 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.