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 Trends: Welcome to ILTA 2011!

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual educational conference of 2011 kicked off yesterday with several networking events, and begins in earnest today with the first day of sessions. eDiscoveryDaily is here to report about the latest eDiscovery trends being discussed at the show. Over the next four days, we will provide a description each day of some of the sessions related to eDiscovery to give you a sense of the topics being covered.

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eDiscovery Best Practices: 6 Project Management Practices to Apply to eDiscovery Cases

We’ve discussed project management as it relates to eDiscovery many times on this blog and even discussed whether there is any difference in managing legal projects vs. other types of projects. This article published on Law Technology News yesterday, written by David Kearney of Cohen & Grigsby provides a good summary of six best practices to apply not only to eDiscovery projects, but to any project. Everybody loves lists, right? At least I do. Here are the six best practices the author listed, with some of my own observations.

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eDiscovery Case Law: Sanctions for Spoliation, Even When Much of the Data Was Restored

A Virginia court recently ordered sanctions against the defendant in a case of deliberate spoliation of electronic discovery documents. In E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co. v. Kolon Indus., Inc., No. 3:09cv58, 2011 WL 2966862 (E.D. Va. July 21, 2011), the defendant was found to have committed spoliation “in bad faith” in a manner that constituted a “violation of duty… to the Court and the judicial process.”

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eDiscovery Trends: North Carolina Adopts eDiscovery Rules

Earlier this year, Wisconsin and Connecticut adopted new eDiscovery rules. On October 1, changes to the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure will go into effect to provide guidelines for handling eDiscovery in North Carolina state courts. The rule changes, for the most part, follow the same guidelines as the 2006 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Here is a summary of the changes.

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eDiscovery Best Practices: When Collecting, Image is Not Always Everything

There was a commercial in the early 1990s for Canon cameras in which tennis player Andre Agassi uttered the quote that would haunt him for most of his early career – “Image is everything.” When it comes to eDiscovery preservation and collection, there are times when “Image is everything”, as in a forensic “image” of the media is necessary to preserve all potentially responsive ESI. However, forensic imaging of media is usually not necessary for Discovery purposes.

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eDiscovery Case Law: "Untimely" Motion for Sanctions for Spoliation Denied

A recent ruling by the US District Court of Tennessee has denied a motion for sanctions for spoliation on the grounds that the motion was “untimely.” In Am. Nat’l Prop. & Cas. Co. v. Campbell Ins., Inc., No. 3:08-cv-00604, 2011 WL 3021399 (M.D. Tenn. July 22, 2011), the plaintiff argued that the defendants’ admitted failure to preserve evidence “warrants a harsh penalty,” but the court found in favor of the defense that the motion was untimely.

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eDiscovery Trends: Same Old Story, Lawyers Struggling to “Get” eDiscovery

A couple of days ago, Law Technology News (LTN) published an article entitled Lawyers Struggle to Get a Grasp on E-Discovery, by Gina Passarella, via The Legal Intelligencer. Noting that “[a]ttorneys have said e-discovery can eat up between 50 to 80 percent of a litigation budget”, the article had several good observations and quotes from various eDiscovery thought leaders. So, do you have a game plan for “getting” eDiscovery?

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eDiscovery Standards: How Does an Industry Get Them?

As discussed yesterday, there is a nascent, but growing, movement pushing for industry standards in eDiscovery. That’s something many litigators may chafe at, thinking that standards and industry benchmarks impose checklists or management processes that tell them how to do their job. But industry standards, when implemented well, provide not only a common standard of care, but can help provide a point of comparison to help drive buying decisions.

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eDiscovery Standards: Does the Industry Need Them?

eDiscovery Daily recently ran a three part series analyzing eDiscovery cost budgeting. Cost has long been a driving force in eDiscovery decision-making, but it is just one dimension in choosing EDD services. Other industries have well-established standards for quality – think of the automotive or software industries, which have standard measures for defects or bugs. This year there has been a rising call for developing industry standards in eDiscovery to provide quality measures.

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