Our Insights on eDiscovery

eDiscovery Trends: Need to Catch Up on Trends Over the Last Six Weeks? Take a Time Capsule.

July 23, 2012

I try to set aside some time over the weekend to catch up on my reading and keep abreast of developments in the industry and although that’s sometimes that’s easier said than done, I stumbled across an interesting compilation of legal technology information from my friend Christy Burke and her team at Burke & Company. On Friday, Burke & Company released The Legal Technology Observer (LTO) Time Capsule on Legal IT Professionals. LTO was a 6 week concentrated collection of essays, articles, surveys and blog posts providing expert practical knowledge about legal technology, eDiscovery, and social media for legal professionals.

eDiscovery Case Law: Judge Scheindlin Says “No” to Self-Collection, “Yes” to Predictive Coding

July 20, 2012

When most people think of the horrors of Friday the 13th, they think of Jason Voorhees. When US Immigration and Customs thinks of Friday the 13th horrors, do they think of Judge Shira Scheindlin? As noted in Law Technology News (Judge Scheindlin Issues Strong Opinion on Custodian Self-Collection, written by Ralph Losey, a previous thought leader interviewee on this blog), New York District Judge Scheindlin issued a decision last Friday (July 13) addressing the adequacy of searching and self-collection by government entity custodians in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

eDiscovery Trends: How Many Requests for User Information is Twitter Receiving? It’s Transparent.

July 19, 2012

As illustrated in the example we posted Tuesday, Twitter continues to receive requests from government agencies for user information (often related to litigation). How many are they receiving? Now, you can find out, simply by clicking on their new Transparency Report page to see the number of requests they have received.

eDiscovery Case Law: “Tweets” Are Public and Must Be Produced, Judge Rules

July 17, 2012

First, Malcolm Harris tried to quash a subpoena seeking production of his Tweets and his Twitter account user information in his New York criminal case. That request was rejected, so Twitter then sought to quash the subpoena themselves, claiming that the order to produce the information imposed an “undue burden” on Twitter and even forced it to “violate federal law”. Now, the criminal court judge has ruled on Twitter’s motion.

eDiscovery Trends: TREC Study Finds that Technology Assisted Review is More Cost Effective

July 16, 2012

As reported in Law Technology News (Technology-Assisted Review Boosted in TREC 2011 Results by Evan Koblentz), the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) Legal Track, a government sponsored project designed to assess the ability of information retrieval techniques to meet the needs of the legal profession, has released its 2011 study results (after several delays). A link to the overview of the 2011 TREC Legal Track can be found here.

eDiscovery Best Practices: Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control and Why Both Are Important in eDiscovery

July 13, 2012

People tend to use the terms Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) interchangeably and it’s a pet peeve of mine. It’s like using the word “irregardless” – which isn’t really a word. The fact is that QA and QC are different mechanisms for ensuring quality in…anything. Products, processes and projects (as well as things that don’t begin with “pro”) are all examples of items that can benefit from quality ensuring mechanisms and those that are related to electronic discovery can particularly benefit.

eDiscovery Trends: eDiscovery Work is Growing in Law Firms and Corporations

July 12, 2012

There was an article in Law Technology News last Friday (Survey Shows Surge in E-Discovery Work at Law Firms and Corporations, written by Monica Bay) that discussed the findings of a survey released by The Cowen Group, indicating that eDiscovery work in law firms and corporations is growing considerably. Eighty-eight law firm and corporate law department professionals responded to the survey.

eDiscovery Trends: The Da Silva Moore Case Has Class (Certification, That Is)

July 11, 2012

As noted in an article written by Mark Hamblett in Law Technology News, Judge Andrew Carter of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has granted conditional class certification in the Da Silva Moore v. Publicis Groupe & MSL Group case.

eDiscovery Best Practices: Types Of Metadata and How They Impact Discovery

July 10, 2012

If an electronic document is a “house” for information, then metadata could be considered the “deed” to that house. Metadata, which is data about the document, contains information such as the user who created it, creation date, the edit history, and file type. There are many different types of metadata and it is important to understand each with regard to requesting that metadata in opposing counsel productions and being prepared to produce it in your own productions. Here are some examples.

eDiscovery Best Practices: You May Need to Collect from Custodians Who Aren’t There

July 9, 2012

A little over a week ago, we talked about how critical the first seven to ten days are in the case once litigation hits. Key activities to get a jump on the case include creating a list of key employees most likely to have documents relevant to the litigation and interviewing those key employees, as well as key department representatives, such as IT for information about retention and destruction policies. These steps are especially important as they may shed light on custodians you might not think about – the ones who aren’t there.