Our Insights on eDiscovery

We’ve spent some time in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series discussing the factors and assumptions that go into eDiscovery budgeting, but what about the concrete eDiscovery process itself? In addition to understanding the factors that go into budgeting, it’s important to recognize the elements that contribute to eDiscovery costs. There are five primary factors that contribute to the costs of eDiscovery in progress.

According to The Independent, staff at Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers has been warned to stop deleting any documents that may be relevant to the current investigations, as a suspension of its usual policy about deletion of documents goes into effect. Over the course of the 2011 investigation into illegal voicemail hacking by News International employees, there has been contention over the ongoing deletion of documents at the newspaper and its subsidiaries. But only during this past weekend did News International’s parent company, News Corp, finally send an email to all of its employees instructing them to take measures preventing the deletion of documents that might be related to the investigation, including emails and other ESI.

Friday, we talked about assumptions and elements that contribute to cost that need to be considered when budgeting for eDiscovery activities. Now that you know a bit about the factors surrounding the cost of eDiscovery, let’s take a look at budgeting and the estimates that attorneys provide to a client before beginning eDiscovery work. The first step in budgeting is to prepare an estimate based on your and your client’s best guesses and assumptions. What are some of these assumptions?

While attorneys may struggle with the regional and international regulations surrounding eDiscovery, your client is likely to be less concerned with the practical legal details of your discovery request, and more concerned with the financial cost. Whether you’re working with the plaintiff or the defense, one of the most important considerations in preparing for eDiscovery is presenting the expense accurately and completely to the client – and that means understanding for yourself the factors that go into budgeting for eDiscovery.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve discovered several challenges associated with international eDiscovery. In the course of pursuing discovery requests in foreign nations, US lawyers also often run into another serious legal snag: blocking statutes. These statutes prevent certain types of information from leaving the country where it originates, and can interfere with discovery of evidence in a number of ways.

Yesterday, we talked about the information you should include in a request for proposal for eDiscovery processing. Today we’ll review some questions you should ask of a service provider to help you to select the one that’s the best fit for your case.

Last week, we covered preparing a RFP for eDiscovery Collection and Forensics. This week’s RFP discussion will focus on processing eDiscovery, and today we’ll cover the information you should provide to a vendor regarding your collection and your requirements. Remember, the more thorough you are, the better the vendor will be able to gauge the scope and complexity of your project.

Last year, eDiscovery Daily identified states that have not currently enacted any rules changes for eDiscovery. One of the states that had previously enacted eDiscovery rules changes – Connecticut – has updated their rules as Superior Court judges made several amendments to the Connecticut Practice Book that will affect eDiscovery and other legal practices in Connecticut courts.

US lawsuits are very public, involving discovery and other public disclosures that go against the cultural traditions and laws of many nations in other parts of the world. In the European Union (EU), for instance, many countries have privacy protection laws that forbid the disclosure of “personal information” – and the definition of personal information here can mean anything from addresses and phone numbers to even the names of individuals if they are used in work reports and business documents.