eDiscovery Daily Blog

• October 4, 2012

Take a closer look – that’s not the EDRM model you see above.  It’s the new EDBP model.

EDBP stands for Electronic Discovery Best Practices and is the brainchild of Ralph Losey, whose e-Discovery Team® blog is one of the must-read blogs (and one of the most in-depth) in the industry.  Ralph is also National e-Discovery Counsel with the law firm of Jackson Lewis, LLP, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Florida College of Law teaching eDiscovery and advanced eDiscovery and has also previously been a thought leader interviewee on this blog.  Other than all that, he’s not very busy.

As Ralph describes on his blog, “EDBP is a new reference of legal best practices for practicing attorneys and paralegals.  It is also an open project where other specialists in the field are invited to make contributions.”  He also notes that “The ten-step diagram…serves as the basic structure of the tasks performed by attorneys in electronic discovery practice. This structure may also change with time to keep up with evolving attorney practices.”

According to the EDBP site (ironically at EDBP.com), the stated mission is as follows:

“The purpose of EDBP is to provide a model of best practices for use by law firms and corporate law departments. EDBP is designed to be an educational resource for all lawyers striving to stay current with the latest thinking on excellence in legal services in electronic discovery law.”

Other notable aspects about EDBP:

• It’s lawyer-centric, designed to address legal services, not the work of vendors.  As a result, it’s different in scope from EDRM, which covers non-legal service activities as well.  “The EDBP chart will focus solely on legal practice and legal services. It will be by and for lawyers only and the paralegals who assist their legal services”.
• It does not address minimum standards for legal services, but instead “embodies an evolving understanding of excellence in legal services”.  In other words, if it were a final exam, you’re expected to ace the exam, not just get a passing grade.

The EDBP site also provides linked detailed write ups of each of the color coded sections, entitled Pre-Suit (gray), Preservation (blue), Cooperation (red), C.A.R. (green), Productions (yellow) and Evidence (turquoise?).  The sections include links to resources of information, such as The Sedona Conference® (including flowcharts) and case cites, as well as references to Federal Rules.

On his blog, Losey says “I am writing the beginning statements of best practices (about half-way through) and will serve as the first editor and gate-keeper for future contributions from others.”  The site also provides a place to provide your email address to subscribe to updates and a comments section to leave a comment for suggestions on how to improve EDBP.  It will be interesting to see how this site evolves – it promises to be an invaluable resource for eDiscovery best practices for lawyers and other legal services personnel.

So, what do you think?  Do you think EDBP will be a useful resource?  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.