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Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Applying Topic Codes in the Document Review
 Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Applying Topic Codes in the Document Review 150 150 CloudNine

So far we’ve covered drafting criteria for responsiveness and for privilege. You may, however, be asking the review team to do more than that in the document review. You might, for example, ask them to apply topic codes to the documents or to identify helpful or harmful documents. At this point in the case, you will be better off keeping this very simple. There are several reasons for this.

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eDiscovery Searching: For Defensible Searching, Be a "STARR"
 eDiscovery Searching: For Defensible Searching, Be a "STARR" 150 150 CloudNine

Defensible searching has become a priority in eDiscovery as parties in several cases have experienced significant consequences (including sanctions) for not implementing a defensible search strategy in responding to discovery requests. I have an acronym that I use to reflect the defensible search process. I call it “STARR” – as in “STAR” with an extra “R” or Green Bay Packer football legend Bart Starr (sorry, Bears fans!). For each search that you need to conduct, here’s how it goes.

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eDiscovery Trends: Metadata Mining Ethics
 eDiscovery Trends: Metadata Mining Ethics 150 150 CloudNine

Years ago, I put together a CLE course about metadata awareness and how hidden data (such as tracked changes and comments) can cause embarrassment or even inadvertent disclosures in eDiscovery. The production of metadata with ESI continues to be a big issue in eDiscovery and organizations need to consider how to handle that metadata (especially if it’s hidden), to avoid issues. Last fall, the American Bar Association published an article with a look at metadata ethics opinions, which have focused on three topics with regard to metadata production.

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eDiscovery Case Law: Privilege Waived for Produced Servers
 eDiscovery Case Law: Privilege Waived for Produced Servers 150 150 CloudNine

If you were at the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) trade show this past August, you may have noticed a huge unfinished building in the middle of the strip – the Fontainebleau Resort. It sits idle after financing was pulled, forcing Fontainebleau Las Vegas LLC to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June of 2009. Naturally, lawsuits followed, between the Term Lenders and Fontainebleau Resort, LLC (FRLLC), the third party parent of Fontainebleau Las Vegas – In re Fontainebleau Las Vegas Contract Litig., (S.D. Fla. Jan 7, 2011).

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Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Drafting Privileged Criteria
 Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Drafting Privileged Criteria 150 150 CloudNine

Yesterday, we covered drafting criteria for responsiveness. You may, however, be asking the review team to do more than identify responsive documents. You might, for example, also ask them to identify privileged documents, significant documents, documents that need to be redacted, documents that need to be reviewed by an expert, and so on. In this issue, we’ll talk about reviewing for privilege.

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Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Drafting Responsive Criteria – a Step-by-Step Guide
 Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Drafting Responsive Criteria – a Step-by-Step Guide 150 150 CloudNine

The criteria that you prepare for the review will be governed by the objectives that you established for the review. At a minimum, you’ll draft criteria for responsive documents. In addition, you may draft criteria for privileged documents, hot documents, and so on. Let’s start with drafting responsive criteria.

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eDiscovery Best Practices: EDRM Data Set for Great Test Data
 eDiscovery Best Practices: EDRM Data Set for Great Test Data 150 150 CloudNine

In it’s almost six years of existence, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Project has implemented a number of mechanisms to standardize the practice of eDiscovery. Having worked on the EDRM Metrics project for the past four years, I have seen some of those mechanisms implemented firsthand. One of the most significant recent accomplishments by EDRM is the EDRM Data Set.

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eDiscovery Searching: Proximity, Not Absence, Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
 eDiscovery Searching: Proximity, Not Absence, Makes the Heart Grow Fonder 150 150 CloudNine

Recently, I assisted a large corporate client where there were several searches conducted across the company’s enterprise-wide document management systems (DMS) for ESI potentially responsive to the litigation. Some of the individual searches on these systems retrieved over 200,000 files by themselves!! That’s where proximity searching comes in.

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Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: First Steps in Drafting Criteria
 Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: First Steps in Drafting Criteria 150 150 CloudNine

In theory, responsive documents are described in the other side’s request for production. In practice, those requests are often open to interpretation. Your goal in drafting responsive criteria is to distill those requests and create a clear set of objective rules that leave little room for interpretation – a set of rules that can be applied correctly and consistently to the document collection.

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Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Get a Handle on the Document Collection
 Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Get a Handle on the Document Collection 150 150 CloudNine

Once you’ve defined the objectives of the review, you need to move forward with other preparation steps: You need to draft review criteria, you need to identify the type of people that are appropriate for the review, and you need to pull that team together. Before moving forward with these steps, you need a bit more information. You need to know what’s in the document collection.

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