Our Insights on eDiscovery

Virtually every collection of electronically stored information (ESI) has at least some files that cannot be effectively searched. Corrupt files, password protected files and other types of exception files are frequent components of your ESI collection and it can become very expensive to make these files searchable or reviewable. Being without an effective plan for addressing these files could lead to problems – even spoliation claims – in your case.

Training for a task should be thorough and aimed at teaching the team what they need to know to do the work correctly and efficiently. It should cover project overview information, procedures for doing the work, and sample work. Here’s a sample training agenda for a document review project that you can use as a guide.

As critical as procedures are, they aren’t enough. People need to be trained in applying those procedures. Training the staff will get your project off to a good start. Training is especially important for tasks that require a team of people to do the work – for example, a document review project. When a team is doing the work, train them together as a group if that’s possible. That way, different interpretations of the rules will likely surface and team members will benefit from the questions of others.

Software as a Service (SaaS) applications have also become increasingly popular in eDiscovery (especially for review and production of ESI) with several eDiscovery SaaS applications available that provide numerous benefits. However, most eDiscovery SaaS applications do not enable the user to upload their own data. Or, if they do, it can be costly.

Last week, on Wednesday and Thursday, we talked about assembling an electronic discovery team. That’s not the only team you might need. You may need to assemble a team for a specific task — for example, for a document review. It’s essential that you assign the right type of people to a task. For many litigation projects, this means deciding whether attorneys or non-attorneys will do the work.

As noted yesterday, eDiscoveryJournal conducted a webinar last Friday with some notable eDiscovery industry thought leaders regarding issues associated with native format production and redaction, including George Socha, Craig Ball and Tom O’Connor, and moderated by Greg Buckles, co-founder of eDiscoveryJournal, who has over 20 years experience in discovery and consulting. Here are more highlights from the webinar.

eDiscoveryJournal conducted a webinar last Friday with some notable eDiscovery industry thought leaders regarding issues associated with native format production and redaction, including George Socha, Craig Ball and Tom O’Connor, and moderated by Greg Buckles, co-founder of eDiscoveryJournal, who has over 20 years experience in discovery and consulting.

Though the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in December of 2006 have affected how discovery of ESI is handled in Federal courts, lawyers who practice exclusively in state court cases may not have had to consider rules for handling of ESI in their cases. Some states have adopted civil procedure rules for eDiscovery; others have not. Effective today, one state that has adopted new amendments to their Rules of Civil Procedure is Oklahoma.