Our Insights on eDiscovery

Does Size Matter? – Best of eDiscovery Daily

September 24, 2014

I frequently get asked how big does an ESI collection need to be to benefit from eDiscovery technology. In a recent case with one of my clients, the client had a fairly small collection – only about 4 GB. But, when a judge ruled that they had to start conducting depositions in a week, they needed to review that data in a weekend. But, if you’re not facing a tight deadline, how large does your collection need to be for the use of eDiscovery technology to provide benefits?

Don’t Get “Wild” with Wildcards – Best of eDiscovery Daily

September 23, 2014

Several months ago, I provided search strategy assistance to a client that had already agreed upon several searches with opposing counsel. One search related to mining activities, so the attorney decided to use a wildcard of “min*” to retrieve variations like “mine”, “mines” and “mining”. That one search retrieved over 300,000 files with hits. Why? Let’s see.

eDiscovery Daily is Four Years Old!

September 22, 2014

Believe it or not, it has been four years ago this past Saturday since we launched the eDiscovery Daily blog! Now is your chance to catch up on some posts that you may have missed!

Is Technology Assisted Review Older than the US Government? – eDiscovery Trends

September 19, 2014

A lot of people consider Technology Assisted Review (TAR) and Predictive Coding (PC) to be new technology. We attempted to debunk that as myth last year after our third annual thought leader interview series by summarizing comments from some of the thought leaders that noted that TAR and PC really just apply artificial intelligence to the review process. But, the foundation for TAR may go way farther back than you might think.

eDiscovery Throwback Thursdays – How Databases Were Used, Circa Early 1980s, Part 5

September 18, 2014

So far in this blog series, we’ve taken a look at the ‘litigation support culture’ in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, we’ve covered how databases were built, and we started discussing how databases were used. We’re going to continue that in this post by discussing the workflow for searching and selecting documents for review.

Court Grants Motion for Spoliation Sanctions Due to Data that is “Less Accessible” – eDiscovery Case Law

September 17, 2014

In Mazzei v. Money Store, New York Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis granted the plaintiff’s motion for spoliation sanctions against the defendant, ordering the defendant to bear the cost of obtaining all the relevant data in question from a third party as well as paying for plaintiff attorney fees in filing the motion.

Litigation Support Tools of the Trade – eDiscovery Best Practices

September 16, 2014

If you have worked in litigation support for a number of years like I have, you start to assemble a toolkit of applications that help you get your job done more quickly and efficiently. In her excellent Litigation Support Guru blog, Amy Bowser-Rollins has recently published a series of posts that describe tools of the trade that she recommends to litigation support “newbies”. Let’s take a look.

Court Rules to Limit Scope of Discovery, Noting that “Searching for ESI is only one discovery tool” – eDiscovery Case Law

September 15, 2014

In United States v. Univ. of Neb. at Kearney, Nebraska Magistrate Judge Cheryl R. Zwart denied the government’s motion to compel discovery, finding that “ESI is neither the only nor the best and most economical discovery method for obtaining the information the government seeks” and stating that searching for ESI “should not be deemed a replacement for interrogatories, production requests, requests for admissions and depositions”.

New Survey Shows eDiscovery Workload, Predictive Coding Use Increasing – eDiscovery Trends

September 12, 2014

eDiscovery workload, the use of predictive coding and projected rate of adoption of technically assisted review are all up significantly, according to a new report by recruiting and staffing firm The Cowen Group.

eDiscovery Throwback Thursdays – How Databases Were Used, Circa Early 1980s, Part 4

September 11, 2014

So far in this blog series, we’ve taken a look at the ‘litigation support culture’ in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, and we’ve covered how a database was built. We’re going to move on to discuss how those databases were used. The picture above is of a Texas Instruments Silent 700 terminal – which was the standard for use by litigators. This photo was taken at the Texas State Historical Museum.