Our Insights on eDiscovery

eDiscovery Best Practices: Competency Ethics – It’s Not Just About the Law Anymore

June 10, 2011

A few months ago at LegalTech New York, I conducted a thought leader interview with Tom O’Connor of Gulf Coast Legal Technology Center, who didn’t exactly mince words when talking about the trend for attorneys to “finally tak[e] technology seriously”. As he noted, “lawyers are finally trying to take some time to try to get up to speed – whining and screaming pitifully all the way about how it’s not fair, and the sanctions are too high and there’s too much data. Get a life, get a grip. Use the tools that are out there that have been given to you for years. The ethical responsibilities of counsel these days includes competently directing and managing eDiscovery.”

eDiscovery Trends: Think Before You Hit Send

June 9, 2011

It’s not the only instance of a one character typo possibly ending a career; instead, it may simply be the latest. Unless you’re living under a rock, you’re probably aware of the “Twittergate” story involving Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), where he initially claimed that a lewd photo posted via Twitter was posted by a hacker to his account, then subsequently admitted this past Monday that he, in fact, posted that picture. Many are calling for him to resign from his Congressional position. The irony is that a one-letter typo may turn out to be his undoing.

eDiscovery Trends: The Best SaaS Providers are Certifiable

June 8, 2011

The increasing popularity of cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions is becoming well documented, with this very blog noting Forrester and Gartner predictions of tremendous growth in cloud computing over the next several years. We’ve also noted the importance of knowing where your data is stored, as many online poker players learned the hard way when the recent US government crackdown of several gambling sites left them without a way to recover their funds. If only there were some sort of certification, administered by an impartial third party, to ensure that your SaaS provider has implemented policies and processes that keep your information secure, stable and safe. There is such a certification.

Working Successfully with eDiscovery and Litigation Support Service Providers: Keeping a Preferred Vendor Program Up to Date, Part 2

June 7, 2011

Last week, we began talking about keeping a preferred vendor program up to date, and we covered establishing criteria to evaluate vendors after every project. Here are the remaining steps in establishing a mechanism for keeping your preferred vendor program fresh and up to date.

Social Tech eDiscovery: Use of Smarsh for Social Media Archiving

June 6, 2011

The online world thrives on social media, but for attorneys who must preserve sensitive social media data for discovery, the widespread growth of social technology presents a laundry list of problems. Fortunately, there are viable solutions that enable you to create a backup of all social networking activity and archive such information in the event it has to be produced in discovery. Here’s one.

eDiscovery Case Law: Completing Production AFTER Trial is Too Late

June 3, 2011

In DL v. District of Columbia, repeated, flagrant, and unrepentant failures of the District of Columbia to comply with discovery orders, failure to supplement discovery responses, and eventual production of thousands of e-mails—some more than two years old—after the date of trial resulted in a sanction of waiver of privilege over documents sought by plaintiffs.

eDiscovery Trends: Email Footers Give Privilege Searches the Boot

June 2, 2011

Many organizations add email disclaimers to their emails for legal protection to attempt to protect themselves from legal threats such as breach of confidentiality or accidental breach of privilege. However, when it comes time to collect and search email collections for confidentiality and privilege, these email footers can wreak havoc with those searches. Searches for the words “confidential” or “privileged” will essentially be rendered useless as they will literally retrieve every email with the email disclaimer footer in it. So, what to do?

Working Successfully with eDiscovery and Litigation Support Service Providers: Keeping a Preferred Vendor Program Up to Date

June 1, 2011

In the last several posts in this series, we talked about evaluating and selecting vendors for a preferred vendor program. Once that’s done, you still have a bit of work to do before rolling out your program. You need to establish a mechanism for on-going evaluation of the vendors on your list. This is an important component of the program – you need to monitor the work of the vendors on your list to ensure that they continue to meet your requirements and live up to your expectations. Here’s the first step in developing this part of the program.

eDiscovery Case Law: Sue Me and Lose? Pay My Costs.

May 31, 2011

In a ruling that may give some plaintiffs’ lawyers pause, a federal judge in Pittsburgh has ruled that the winning defendants in an antitrust case are entitled to reimbursement of more than $367,000 in eDiscovery costs.

eDiscovery Trends: The Only Prescription is More Cloud

May 27, 2011

A famous “philosopher” once said, “I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell”. It seems that many corporations and law firms “got a fever” and “the only prescription is more CLOUD”. As we noted earlier this week, Forrester has forecast that the global Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) “cloud” computing market will grow from 40.7 billion dollars in 2011 to more than 241 billion dollars by 2020 — a six-fold increase. So, there are the predictions. The question is why?