Our Insights on eDiscovery

Read on to learn more about the latest trends and insights in the world of digital discovery.
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eDiscovery Best Practices: Quality Control, Making Sure the Numbers Add Up
 eDiscovery Best Practices: Quality Control, Making Sure the Numbers Add Up 150 150 CloudNine

Yesterday, we wrote about tracking file counts from collection to production, the concept of expanded file counts, and the categorization of files during processing. Today, let’s walk through a scenario to show how the files collected are accounted for during the discovery process.

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eDiscovery Best Practices: Quality Control, It’s a Numbers Game
 eDiscovery Best Practices: Quality Control, It’s a Numbers Game 150 150 CloudNine

Previously, we wrote about Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) in the eDiscovery process. Both are important in improving the quality of work product and making the eDiscovery process more defensible overall. For example, in attorney review, QA mechanisms include validation rules to ensure that entries are recorded correctly while QC mechanisms include a second review (usually by a review supervisor or senior attorney) to ensure that documents are being categorized correctly. Another overall QC mechanism is tracking of document counts through the discovery process, especially from collection to production, to identify how every collected file was handled and why each non-produced document was not produced.

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eDiscovery Case Law: No Sanctions For Spoliation With No Bad Faith
 eDiscovery Case Law: No Sanctions For Spoliation With No Bad Faith 150 150 CloudNine

In Sherman v. Rinchem Co., the plaintiff in a defamation case against his former employer appealed the district court’s denial of both his summary judgment motion and request for an adverse inference jury instruction. The district court had decided the case under Minnesota law, which “provides that ‘even when a breach of the duty to preserve evidence is not done in bad faith, the district court must attempt to remedy any prejudice that occurs as a result of the destruction of the evidence.’” In contrast, as the Eighth Circuit pointed out, in this case where the parties had diversity, and a question remained as to whether state or federal spoliation laws were applicable, federal law requires “a finding of intentional destruction indicating a desire to suppress the truth” in order to impose sanctions.

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eDiscovery Trends: iDiscovery
 eDiscovery Trends: iDiscovery 150 150 CloudNine

Yesterday was a day that tech enthusiasts and ordinary people alike had circled on their calendar since it was confirmed as the date of Apple’s press event to unveil the iPhone5. Apple proudly boasted that it had sold 400 million iOS devices by the end of June of this year, which can in part be attributed to the smoothly operating software running on their devices. Advances in mobile high tech have made these portable computers accessible and their presence inescapable even among late adopters. What is simple and intuitive from a user standpoint, however, can prove challenging and fickle to a computer forensics expert.

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eDiscovery Best Practices: Repairing a Corrupted Outlook PST File
 eDiscovery Best Practices: Repairing a Corrupted Outlook PST File 150 150 CloudNine

We like to believe that there will never be any problems with the data that we preserve, collect and process for eDiscovery purposes. Sometimes, however, critical data may be difficult or impossible to use. Perhaps key files are password protected from being opened and the only way to open them is to “crack” the password. Or, perhaps a key file may be corrupted. If that file is an Outlook Personal Storage Table (PST) file, that file corruption could literally make tens of thousands of documents unavailable for discovery unless the file can be repaired.

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eDiscovery Case Law: Social Media Is No Different than eMail for Discovery Purposes
 eDiscovery Case Law: Social Media Is No Different than eMail for Discovery Purposes 150 150 CloudNine

In Robinson v. Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc., Oregon Magistrate Judge Paul Papak found that social media is just another form of electronically stored information (ESI), stating “I see no principled reason to articulate different standards for the discoverability of communications through email, text message, or social media platforms. I therefore fashion a single order covering all these communications.”

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eDiscovery Case Law: Google Awarded $1 Million from Oracle, But Denied Discovery Costs
 eDiscovery Case Law: Google Awarded $1 Million from Oracle, But Denied Discovery Costs 150 150 CloudNine

As noted in SiliconBeat and ARN, Judge William Alsup ordered Oracle on Tuesday to pay Google $1 million as reimbursement for Google’s fees for a court-appointed expert in their court battle over intellectual property and Google’s Android software. However, the ruling is only a partial victory for Google, who was seeking $4 million from Oracle in reimbursement of costs associated with the case.

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eDiscovery Trends: Nominate Your Favorite Blog by Tomorrow!
 eDiscovery Trends: Nominate Your Favorite Blog by Tomorrow! 150 150 CloudNine

With back to back weeks of political party conventions leading up to the elections in November, nominations are in the forefront of the minds of many Americans these days (at least those not watching the Giants and Cowboys kicking off the NFL season!). It’s an important time for our country. While not quite on a par with the presidential nomination, ABA Journal is currently asking for nominations for the best 100 legal blawgs, er, blogs.

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eDiscovery Trends: Florida Supreme Court Adopts New eDiscovery Rule Amendments
 eDiscovery Trends: Florida Supreme Court Adopts New eDiscovery Rule Amendments 150 150 CloudNine

As we discussed last October, the state of Florida has been working to adopt new rules regarding handling of eDiscovery. Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court of Florida approved eDiscovery rule amendments that were proposed by the Florida Bar’s Civil Procedure Rules Standing Committee. The amendments to address Electronically Stored Information (ESI) generally follow the 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, are entirely contained within existing Rules 1.200, 1.201, 1.280, 1.340, 1.350, 1.380 and 1.410 of the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure and went into effect this past Saturday, September 1.

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eDiscovery Case Law: Citing Rule 26(g), Court Orders Plaintiff’s Counsel to Disclose Search Strategy
 eDiscovery Case Law: Citing Rule 26(g), Court Orders Plaintiff’s Counsel to Disclose Search Strategy 150 150 CloudNine

Our 501st post on the blog addresses S2 Automation LLC v. Micron Technology, where New Mexico District Judge James Browning ordered the plaintiff’s attorneys to disclose the search strategy their client used to identify responsive documents, based on Federal Rule 26(g) that requires attorneys to sign discovery responses and certify that they are “complete and correct.”

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