eDiscovery Daily Blog

• September 11, 2015

Cross-border discovery presents a growing challenge for courts, privacy authorities, companies, employees, counsel, and requesting parties.  Discovery and Data Protection Laws vary widely around the world, and these laws may conflict.  Foreign countries have differing notions of privacy and discovery than we do here in the US.  Now, The Sedona Conference® has created a guide of practical in-house approaches to help.

The Sedona Conference Working Group 6 on International Electronic Information Management, Discovery and Disclosure (WG6) – the Working Group responsible for The Sedona Conference International Principles on Discovery, Disclosure and Data Protection (“International Litigation Principles”), has released for public comment a new guide titled Practical In-House Approaches for Cross-Border Discovery and Data Protection (“Practical Approaches”).

In order to maximize the value of the International Litigation Principles for organizations and in-house counsel, WG6 has drafted Practical Approaches to provide consensus-based practical guidance and solutions for the cross-border data transfer and discovery challenges that many organizations and in-house counsel regularly confront.  The 49 page guide (which includes extensive appendices) includes the following sections:

• In-House Perspectives on Discovery and Data Protection: Describes the differing notions of privacy and discovery that exist around the world today;
• The Sedona Conference International Principles on Discovery, Disclosure & Data Protection: Recap of the six international principles originally introduced in the International Litigation Principles Guide;
• Practice Points for Conducting Cross-Border Discovery in View of Data Protection and Data Privacy Regulations: Eight detailed practice points, each that provide a hypothetical situation, for addressing everything from the need to proceed deliberately in countries with comprehensive Data Protection Laws to releasing legal holds and return or dispose of data promptly upon termination of a matter;
• Practical Approaches Appendices: The Sedona Conference In-House Tool Kit for Data Protection and Cross-Border Discovery: A handful of useful documents that include an 18 page eDiscovery and Data Protection Model Guideline (which includes answers to FAQs), a Template Cross-Border Discovery Management Form for In-House eDiscovery Teams, a one page Talking Points Infographic for Internal Business Clients and Employees and an Exemplar Heat Map of Data Protection and Data Privacy Regulations.

The PDF guide can be downloaded here.  As always, it’s free!

The Practical Approaches guide is open for public comment through December 15, 2015. Questions and comments can be sent to comments@sedonaconference.org.  After reviewing the comments, the drafting team expects to publish a “final” version early next year.  In addition, a 90-minute webinar will be scheduled for later this fall to address questions you may have to a panel selected from the drafting team, and will be announced on The Sedona Conference web page.

So, what do you think?  Does your organization struggle with cross-border discovery?  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.