eDiscovery Daily Blog
LitigationWorld Quick Start Guide to Mastering eDiscovery – eDiscovery Best Practices
With the Super Bowl coming up in a few days, it seems appropriate to relay a story about the man for whom the trophy to the winning team is named…
During his first year with the Green Bay Packers, legendary coach Vince Lombardi pulled his team together for a stern lecture after his team lost five games in a row. He scolded them saying “You forgot every basic fundamental about this game. We are going to have to start all over again, from scratch!” Then, he picked up a football and said “Gentlemen, the basics. This is a football!” To which one of his players responded “Hold on a minute, Coach! You’re going too fast!”
Sometimes, it seems like we’re “going too fast” when trying to explain eDiscovery to attorneys. At least it seems that there are a lot of attorneys that don’t understand the simplest basics. Now, a brand new guide is hoping to help change that. Earlier this month, TechnoLawyer published LitigationWorld Quick Start Guide to Mastering Ediscovery, written by Tom O’Connor, who is a nationally recognized consultant in legal technology (and past thought leader interviewee on this blog).
After illustrating just how big the knowledge gap can be, how a lack of eDiscovery knowledge can prove disastrous (via the opinion In re Fannie Mae Securities (D.C. Cir. Jan. 6, 2009)) and the ethical duties for lawyers to understand technology, Tom’s Quick Start Guide dives into the “This is a football!” basics of how computers work and why you should care. It discusses the bits and bytes (literally) of how computers store data that is discoverable and how “deleted” electronically stored information (ESI) is actually often recoverable. Remember Oliver North and the Iran-Contra affair? His deleted email was recovered and he was convicted of perjury…way back in 1989. These are not groundbreaking new concepts, but they are important if you’re going to be responsible for handling data in discovery.
With some basic technical concepts covered, the guide covers the evolution of eDiscovery with the December 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), similar amendments adopted by many of the states and, of course, the groundbreaking Zubulake v. UBS Warburg case. To tie back to the computer fundamentals, Tom asks and answers an important question: “How can you apply current and future rules to ensure your clients preserve all potentially relevant ESI unless you know how it’s stored? You can’t so that’s why you need to understand the basic technological underpinnings of data storage.”
Tom then goes on to cover various forms of production and the advantages and disadvantages of each – his reference to TIFF images as “petrified” is the best adjective I’ve heard yet to describe them – and covers other basic (but important) concepts, such as collection, processing and load files. He concludes by discussing the importance of learning to “speak geek” about storage technologies and sets the path for you to travel to “true eDiscovery mastery”.
The document is relatively short and sweet, at just 17 pages after the title page and is an easy read, yet contains numerous links to outside resources for those who want to dive deeper. He references a number of resources and courses available from a variety of eDiscovery pioneers, including Ralph Losey, Craig Ball and Michael Arkfeld. There is no shortage of resources in this guide for those who want to learn more about eDiscovery.
The free guide is available for download at TechnoLawyer here (you have to be a member of TechnoLawyer to get it, but membership is free, which also gives you access to numerous other resources available on the site).
As Tom notes via a quote from Craig Ball (from this very blog, no less), “Understanding information technology is a necessity for litigators. That’s where the evidence lives.” As Tom notes, “We all must adapt to this new paradigm of working in the digital world.” Let’s hope that adaptation occurs sooner rather than later.
So, what do you think? Do you understand the basic technical concepts you need to as a lawyer? 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.