Our Insights on eDiscovery

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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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eDiscovery Trends: Sanctions Down in 2010 — at least thru December 1
 eDiscovery Trends: Sanctions Down in 2010 — at least thru December 1 150 150 CloudNine

Recently, this blog cited a Duke Law Journal study that indicated that eDiscovery sanctions were at an all-time high through 2009. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I saw a story recently from Williams Mullen providing a very thorough recap of 2010 including trends in sanctions (identifying several cases where sanctions were at issue), advances made during the year in cooperation and proportionality, challenges associated with privacy concerns in foreign jurisdictions and trends in litigation dealing with social media. One noteworthy finding is that, according to the report, sanctions were sought and awarded in fewer cases in 2010.

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eDiscovery Best Practices: Database Discovery Pop Quiz ANSWERS
 eDiscovery Best Practices: Database Discovery Pop Quiz ANSWERS 150 150 CloudNine

So, how did you do? Did you know all the answers from Friday’s post – without “googling” them? 😉 Here are the answers – enjoy!

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eDiscovery Best Practices: Database Discovery Pop Quiz
 eDiscovery Best Practices: Database Discovery Pop Quiz 150 150 CloudNine

Databases: You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them. Or so it seems in eDiscovery. On a regular basis, I’ve seen various articles and discussions related to discovery of databases and other structured data and I remain very surprised how few legal teams understand database discovery and know how to handle it. But, maybe you already know all you need to know about databases? Here is a brief “pop” quiz on database concepts. See how many you can answer!

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Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Clearly Define Objectives
 Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Clearly Define Objectives 150 150 CloudNine

Yesterday, we introduced the blog series to discuss Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team. Now, it’s time to get started! The first step in preparing for a document review is to very clearly define the objectives of the review. It’s an easy step, but it’s very important. It will drive several subsequent decisions that you’ll make regarding management of the project.

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Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Introduction
 Managing an eDiscovery Contract Review Team: Introduction 150 150 CloudNine

In a perfect world, attorneys responsible for a case would review an entire document collection for responsive materials. On large cases with huge collections, that’s just not practical or possible. In those situations, your only choice may be to pull together a team of contract reviewers to identify responsive materials.

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eDiscovery Trends: 2011 Predictions — By The Numbers
 eDiscovery Trends: 2011 Predictions — By The Numbers 150 150 CloudNine

Comedian Nick Bakay always ends his Tale of the Tape skits where he compares everything from Married vs. Single to Divas vs. Hot Dogs with the phrase “It’s all so simple when you break things down scientifically”. The late December/early January time frame is always when various people in eDiscovery make their annual predictions as to what trends to expect in the coming year. I thought we would take a look at other predictions and see if we can spot some common trends among those. Here they are.

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State eDiscovery Rules: Wisconsin Adopts Amendments to Rules for eDiscovery
 State eDiscovery Rules: Wisconsin Adopts Amendments to Rules for eDiscovery 150 150 CloudNine

On November 1 of last year, we noted on this blog that Oklahoma had become the latest state to adopt amendments to their Rules of Civil Procedure, leaving only 14 states (including DC) to not have enacted any rules changes that address discovery of ESI as of January 1st of this year. That’s because on January 1, Wisconsin became the latest state to adopt eDiscovery amendments to their Rules of Civil Procedure.

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