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Electronic Discovery

eDiscovery Throwback Thursdays – Circa 1978, We Lived in a World of Paper
 

Back before desktops, laptops and tablets, the business world meant paper.  Lots of paper. And that meant that litigation preparation activities revolved around paper.  Paper documents. Paper logs for tracking activity. Paper coding forms for recording document information. Paper reports.  Our supplies for litigation support activities were pens, pencils, pads of paper, staplers, staple removers, rubber fingers, white-out, post-it notes, boxes, manila file folders, and yes, even Band-Aids (paper cuts were a common work-place ‘injury’).

Although it was a very different world, some things were the same.  In fact, if you look at the EDRM graphic, every phase on the chart also applied to paper.  It was the way things worked back then, if you took the word “Electronic” out of the title and simply called it “Discovery Reference Model”.  Here’s a summary of how the phases of the EDRM applied, prior to the early 1980s:

  • Information Governance:  Businesses managed information and paper.  Employees maintained paper files in filing cabinets in their offices.  Important documents and those of common interest were stored in departmental central files (typically a common area with rows of filing cabinets or shelves of files, maintained by a secretary).  Old documents were boxed up and sent to warehouse facilities for long-term storage.  Indices of the files in those boxes were maintained on paper logs.  Many businesses had document retention policies in place, which included schedules for when documents were to be shredded.
  • Identification:  Responsive documents needed to be located, so that meant identifying custodians, central filing systems and warehouse facilities that were likely to house responsive materials.
  • Preservation:  Potentially responsive paper documents needed to be preserved…  which meant ‘stop shredding’.
  • Collection:  Paper documents were collected.
  • Processing:  Usually, ‘processing’ meant photocopying potentially responsive documents.
  • Review:  Documents were reviewed for responsiveness and privilege.
  • Analysis:  Document content was analyzed, documents were categorized around witnesses and issues, and hot documents were identified.  Most attorneys created a physical binder for each witness, fact and issue in a case, and a single document might be photocopied a number of times, once for each binder into which it was filed.  In the late 1970’s, for some large, ‘bet your company’ cases, documents were coded and document information was loaded into a database. Building a database, however, was by no means commonplace in the late 1970’s.
  • Production:  Documents that were identified as responsive were turned over – in paper form – during discovery.
  • Presentation:  Paper documents were used as exhibits in hearings, depositions and at trial.

Next week, we’ll take a closer look at a typical document collection project circa 1978.

Please let us know if there are eDiscovery topics you’d like to see us cover in eDiscoveryDaily.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Transparency Reports for Other Companies – Social Tech eDiscovery

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve taken a fresh look at Twitter’s Law Enforcement Policies and their latest Transparency Report to show government requests for data, looked at (for the first time) LinkedIn’s Privacy and Law Enforcement Data Request Guidelines and Transparency Report and, yesterday, looked at Facebook’s policies and Government Request Reports.  Today, we will look at Transparency Reports for other companies.

Many other high profile companies also provide reports showing government requests for data, not just social media companies.  Some, like Google, provide a highly interactive report to navigate to various types of requests, ranging from government requests to remove data to requests for information about their users.  Others, like Apple, provide a simple one page letter with broad ranges of information requests and accounts affected (Apple’s latest letter is over a year old).  Some are current (through the end of 2013 at least), others have not been updated to reflect data since the end of 2012.  Evidently, some companies take transparency more seriously than others!  With that in mind, here are links to reports for various high profile technology companies where you might have data:

I tried to pull up the Transparency Report for Pinterest, but the link immediately redirects to their help page, so it’s only transparent if you can read really fast!

Obviously, in these modern times, our data (both personal and professional) is stored by a number of companies and law enforcement entities will request data from those companies for investigative purposes.  It’s a good idea to know how those companies respond to those requests and what rights you have as a customer.

So, what do you think?  Have you needed to request user information from any high profile technology companies for litigation purposes?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Facebook’s Policies and Government Request Reports – Social Tech eDiscovery

Two weeks ago, we took a fresh look at Twitter’s Law Enforcement Policies and their latest Transparency Report to show government requests for data, then last week (for the first time), we looked at LinkedIn’s Privacy and Law Enforcement Data Request Guidelines and Transparency Report.  This week, we’ll take a look at Facebook’s policies and Government Request Reports.

We originally looked at Facebook’s law enforcement policies back in 2010 – this policy was updated extensively by the time we looked at it again in 2012.  The good news is that the policy has remain largely unchanged since our last look – the main difference is the option to submit records requests online as well as via email, snail mail or fax (you still have to be a law enforcement officer to submit the request).

Facebook, similar to Twitter and LinkedIn, posts biannual Transparency Reports, however the company uniquely calls them “Global Government Request Reports”.  Facebook began publishing these reports last year, and posted the first one on June 30, 2013 for the first six months of 2013 – the latest report available is for the last six months of 2013.  The main page gives you an interactive map to click on to select a continent, then you can select a country for which get a specific report.  Or, you can download the entire report as a comma-separated values (.CSV) file to review all of the countries at once.

The downloaded entire report covers: 1) The countries that requested information from Facebook about their users, 2) The number of requests received from each of those countries, 3) The number of users/accounts specified in those requests, and 4) The percentage of these requests in which Facebook was required by law to disclose at least some data.  It also includes instances in which Facebook has removed content that governments have identified as illegal (e.g., posts denying the holocaust are illegal in Germany).  If you select the country individually via the interactive map, you also get a breakdown of the first three numbers for the types of requests (e.g., Search Warrant, Subpoena, Emergency Disclosures, Other).

In the latest report, the US had 12,598 requests for user data (44.8% of the total of 28,147 worldwide), referencing 18,715 user accounts (47.6% of the total of 39,320 worldwide) and some data was produced in 81.02% of the requests.  The next highest country was India (3,598 requests involving 4,711 accounts).  We’re number one!

Facebook, like other social media platforms, continues to push the US government to allow more transparency in releasing specific numbers and types of national security-related requests. Colin Stretch, Facebook’s General Counsel, made an all-encompassing comment about the topic: “Government transparency and public safety are not mutually exclusive ideals. Each can exist simultaneously in free and open societies, and they help make us stronger. We strongly encourage all governments to provide greater transparency about their efforts aimed at keeping the public safe, and we will continue to be aggressive advocates for greater disclosure.”

You can get more information about the reports here and look at their FAQ page here.

What other sites have reports?  We’ll take a look at that tomorrow.

So, what do you think?  Have you needed to request information from Facebook for litigation purposes?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Court Denies Sanctions for Deletion of “Smoking Gun” Email, Grants Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment – eDiscovery Case Law
 

In the case In re Text Messaging Antitrust Litig., 08 C 7082, MDL No. 1997 (N.D. Ill. May 19, 2014), Illinois District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly not only denied the plaintiffs’ request for an adverse inference sanction against the defendants for destroying emails, but also granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, as the plaintiffs failed to provide any supporting circumstantial evidence to meet their burden of proof.

The plaintiffs filed this suit on behalf of all those who purchased text-messaging services from AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless, alleging that these providers, along with defendant CTIA-The Wireless Association, conspired to fix prices for Text Messaging Services in violation of section 1 of the Sherman Act.  On September 9, 2008, shortly after the last carrier increased text messaging rates, Senator Herbert Kohl, chairman of the antitrust subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, sent a two-page letter to the chief executive officers of the four carrier defendants "to express my concern regarding what appear to be sharply rising rates your companies have charged to wireless phone customers for text messaging”. 

A day later, The Wall Street Journal published an article (Text-Messaging Rates Come Under Scrutiny) regarding Senator Kohl’s investigation.  That same day a T-Mobile employee sent the text of the article via email to several individuals, including T-Mobile employees Adrian Hurditch, then the company's vice president of services and strategic pricing, and Lisa Roddy, then the company's director of marketing planning and analysis, but the subsequent thread of emails between Hurditch and Roddy was deleted.  The plaintiffs claimed that once Senator Kohl began contacting wireless carriers, T-Mobile had a duty to preserve all relevant electronically stored information and their failure to preserve and produce the emails reflected its “willfulness, bad faith, or fault” and warranted sanctions.

Judge Kennelly “agree[d] that plaintiffs have shown that T-Mobile's employees likely deleted the e-mail(s) intentionally and that they did so for the purpose of concealing the e-mail's contents. Nonetheless, plaintiffs have not shown that the actions of the T-Mobile personnel involved concealment of information that meets the requirement of being ‘adverse’ to T-Mobile. Specifically, the record does not reflect that Hurditch, the sender of the original e-mail that was deleted and the person who called T-Mobile's price increase ‘collusive,’ was in a position to have knowledge of or participate in any collusion between the wireless carriers.”  As a result, Judge Kennelly declined to order sanctions against T-Mobile for deletion of the e-mail or e-mails.

The plaintiffs also claimed that another defendant, CTIA destroyed emails and cleared the laptop profile of CTIA’s Head of Wireless Internet Development, but, because the plaintiffs did not provide any evidence that would support an inference that the missing information was adverse, their request for sanctions was again denied.

With regard to the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, the plaintiffs argued that Hurditch’s email to Roddy on September 10, 2008, with a reference to collusion, is a “smoking gun.”  However, Judge Kennelly stated that “Hurditch's status as well informed within his company and as ‘an active mentor’ to Roddy do not qualify him as having knowledge of a conspiracy”; therefore, “there are too many unsupported steps in the logic required to permit a reasonable inference that Hurditch was aware of a conspiracy”.  With no other supporting circumstantial evidence, the plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of proof to survive the motion for summary judgment; therefore, Judge Kennelly granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment.

So, what do you think?  Should a spoliation sanction have been issued against the defendant who “likely deleted the e-mail(s) intentionally”?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Court Orders Sharing of Costs for Forensic Examination of Plaintiff’s Emails – eDiscovery Case Law

In Zeller v. So. Central Emergency Med. Servs. Inc., 1:13-CV-2584 (M.D. Pa. May 20, 2014), Pennsylvania Magistrate Judge Karoline Mehalchick used the Zubulake seven factor test to rule that the costs for restoring and searching the plaintiff’s emails should be shared, up to a maximum contribution by $1,500 by the plaintiff.

In this wrongful termination case based on plaintiff’s claims of retaliation by the defendant after the plaintiff took a leave of absence under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the parties began the eDiscovery process to recover the plaintiff’s emails and asked the Court to resolve the issue of “first review” of documents identified as a result of an agreed upon search of Plaintiff’s emails, and the matter of cost-sharing.

The plaintiff asserted that he is entitled to a “first review” of all documents to be produced while the defendants asserted that after forensic retrieval of emails from Plaintiff’s email account, all non-potentially privileged documents should be forwarded directly to the defendants to save time.  Noting that “Plaintiff has no obligation to produce emails that are wholly irrelevant to either party’s claim or defense” and that broad search terms such as the plaintiff’s wife’s name was used, Judge Mehalchick ruled that the plaintiff was entitled to a “first review” of the results of the forensic examination of his email account.

Regarding the cost sharing request by the defendants, Judge Mehalchick referenced Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(B) and determined that the data requested was inaccessible without the forensic examination and used the seven factor balance test below for cost-shifting from Zubulake v. UBS Warburg to decide whether forensic examination costs should be shifted.  The factors are:

  1. The extent to which the request is specifically tailored to discover relevant information;
  2. The availability of such information from other sources;
  3. The total cost of production, compared to the amount in controversy;
  4. The total cost of production, compared to the resources available to each party;
  5. The relative ability of each party to control costs and its incentive to do so;
  6. The importance of the issues at stake in the litigation; and
  7. The relative benefits to the parties of obtaining the information.

Judge Mehalchick stated that “the parties were unable to identify the total cost of production of the search, compared to the amount in controversy and the resources to each party”.  However, with regard to the other five factors, she ruled that “the request is specifically tailored to discovery relevant information”, that “there is no other source which could possibly be available”, that since the parties have agreed on a forensic examiner “neither party has any more ability than the other to control the cost”, that “the information sought is important to the issues at stake in the litigation” and that “it is to the benefit of both parties to obtain the information sought”.

As a result, Judge Mehalchick found “that some cost-shifting is appropriate” and ruled “Plaintiff and Defendant should share equally in the cost of restoring and searching Plaintiff’s emails, up to a maximum contribution by Plaintiff of One Thousand Five Hundred Dollars ($1500.00).”

So, what do you think?  Was the Zubulake test applied appropriately?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery History: Welcome to Throw-back Thursdays!
 

I was recently teaching a project management class at a large law firm, and a student mentioned that he was working on a case that involved a very old document collection, some of which only existed on microfiche. He asked me for advice on managing the conversion of those documents and incorporating them into his bigger-picture project. 

I watched as another student turned to her laptop and started typing.  She was quite young and looked a bit confused, or maybe inquisitive, I suspected she was Googling “microfiche”.  I was right.  And it made me chuckle.  I asked for a show of hands… she was not the only one in the room who didn’t know what microfiche was. Since I, of course, could quite handily speak on the subject, it got me thinking about just how long I’ve been working in this field, and about how much things have changed. 

I wondered if it would be useful for some of the younger folks in eDiscovery to understand the history… to know how original litigation support databases were built, to know how they were used, and to know a little bit about the older technology that was employed.  Except for the rare case where legacy methods are an issue, I concluded that it’s probably not particularly helpful… but it might be interesting, and it might be fun to look back. So, we’re starting a “Throw-back Thursday” blog series, where we’ll go back in time and I’ll tell you a bit about how things used to be.

In this series, we’ll talk about the ‘litigation support’ culture and industry in the old days, about the technology that was used, about the processes for building databases, how databases were searched, how documents were retrieved, and the evolution of the process between those old days and now. So tune-in next week for discussion of the litigation support industry, circa 1980 (and even a little before that).

Please let us know if there are eDiscovery topics you’d like to see us cover in eDiscoveryDaily.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

LinkedIn’s Transparency Report – Social Tech eDiscovery

Yesterday, we talked about LinkedIn’s Privacy and Law Enforcement Data Request Guidelines.  Like Twitter and other social media companies, LinkedIn also discloses a semi-annual Transparency Report to inform the public of the frequency and type of government requests the company receives regarding member data.  Let’s take a look.

With regards to the reporting, it’s worth noting that LinkedIn and other web-based companies cannot be fully transparent because of restrictions imposed on disclosing the number of national security-related requests received from the U.S. government. In A Letter to the LinkedIn Community, Erika Rottenberg, the Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of LinkedIn, explains that, “we have been expressly prohibited by the U.S. government from disclosing the number of U.S. national security-related requests we receive, if any. This prohibition, which limits our ability to provide the transparency that we think our members and the public deserve, has been the source of great disappointment and frustration to us.”

In September 2013, LinkedIn filed legal challenges seeking the right to provide greater transparency into the number of national security-related requests they receive from the U.S. government. And last December they released, along with other technology companies, government surveillance reform principles that highlight government request transparency as a key part of necessary reform. In response to the legal challenges and advocacy of LinkedIn and other technology companies, the U.S. government officially changed its policy regarding the reporting of national security-related requests on January 27, 2014, to increase transparency (detailed in the articleGoogle, Yahoo and Linkedin disclose details on US National Security requests).

So, the Transparency Report isn’t as transparent as LinkedIn (and other providers) would like, but it’s better.

With that in mind, in the latest Transparency Report, covering the second half of 2013, there were 72 government requests for member data globally reported, with 56 of those (78%) coming from the US.   Requests actually dropped 13% from the first half of 2013 (from 83 to 72 globally and from 70 to 56 in the US – 20% drop).  Those requests impacted 110 member accounts globally, 90 of which were in the US (82%).  While requests dropped in the second half of 2013, the accounts affected rose from 97 to 110 (13% rise) globally and from 84 to 90 in the US (7%).  LinkedIn provides stats for the last two years on government requests for member data and member accounts impacted (at six month intervals).  In the most recent six months, LinkedIn provided data in response to overall requests 47% of the time (61% of the time to US requests).

Next week, we will take a look at Facebook’s policies and transparency.

So, what do you think?  Have you ever request information from LinkedIn for discovery purposes?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

LinkedIn Has Privacy and Law Enforcement Data Request Guidelines Too – Social Tech eDiscovery

Last week, we discussed recent updates to Twitter’s Law Enforcement policies as well as Twitter’s latest Transparency Report to show government requests for data.  Today, let’s take a look at the Privacy Policy and Law Enforcement Guidelines for LinkedIn.

This is our first time to take a look at LinkedIn, which (as you probably know) is a business-focused social networking site, designed for professional networking.  On March 26th of this year, LinkedIn updated its Terms of Service, which include its Privacy Policy and User Agreement, in part because they acquired Pulse, a mobile app, and SlideShare, a sharing platform for business documents, videos and presentations. As a result, LinkedIn integrated SlideShare and Pulse’s Terms of Service into one unified agreement.

The Privacy Policy is broken into four main sections: 1) What information we collect, 2) How we use your personal information, 3) Your choices & obligations and 4) Other information.  In the “How we use your personal information”, LinkedIn notes that “It is possible that we may need to disclose personal information, profile information, or information about your activities as a Member or Visitor when required by law, subpoena, or other legal process” as well as to investigate potential illegal activities, enforce the User Agreement or exercise the rights of LinkedIn or its members.  With regard to notifying users about these requests, LinkedIn states they “attempt to notify Members about legal demands for their data when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency” and they “may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague or lack proper authority”.

In the “Your choices & obligations” section, LinkedIn’s policies regarding the access rights and information on closing members’ accounts are similar to those of Facebook andTwitter. If members close their account, their information will be removed within 24 hours, and LinkedIn delete closed account information and de-personalizes logs and other backup information within 30 days (unless required for legal obligations, meeting regulatory requirements, resolving disputes, and preventing fraud and abuse).

LinkedIn’s Law Enforcement Guidelines are kept in a separate PDF document.  The Guidelines answer questions such as the type of data requests you can make, your contact information that you must provide, information being requested, types of data that might be available, whether members will be notified that their information is being requested, non-US requirements, etc.  LinkedIn only accepts Data Requests, such as subpoenas and search warrants; Preservation Requests, in connection with official criminal investigations; and Emergency Requests, using the Emergency Request Form on the last page. You can only submit requests via fax, certified mail, express courier or in person, NOT online.  What, no horse and buggy?

Tomorrow, we will take a look at LinkedIn’s Transparency Report to see how many government requests they receive.  It will be here before you know it!

So, what do you think?  Have you ever had to request data from LinkedIn for a case?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Court Denies Defendant’s Request to Image Plaintiff’s PCs Three Years after Termination – eDiscovery Case Law
 

Here’s an interesting case courtesy of Virginia Lawyer’s Weekly…

In Downs v. Virginia Health Systems, Civil No. 5:13cv00083, (W.D. Va. June 2, 2014), Virginia Magistrate Judge James G. Welsh, citing proportionality and privacy concerns, denied the defendant’s motion to compel the mirror imaging of the Plaintiff’s personal computers nearly three years after she had been terminated.

The plaintiff brought an employee discrimination case against the defendant following being terminated after nearly seventeen years of employment as an executive secretary.  Among the reasons the defendant gave to justify her discharge was that that she had accessed her supervisor’s e-mail account without authority (she disputed that the access was not authorized) and that she had similarly forwarded information from that account to her personal email accounts and her home computers without permission.

The plaintiff represented that she had deleted all material she sent to her home computers following her August 2011 termination; therefore, the defendant requested to have the plaintiff’s two family computers mirror-imaged “to ensure against any further spoliation or destruction of evidence”.  The plaintiff objected to that request as “overly broad, burdensome, ‘personally intrusive,’ and ‘would necessarily invade’ the attorney-client privilege”.  She also argued that the defendants’ in-house IT experts and its own computer logs and reports would provide the same information being requested by the defendant to be mirror-imaged.

Judge Welsh stated that “On its face, the discovery issue presented by the defendants’ request for an exhaustive forensic examination of the plaintiff’s computers is also directly within the scope of ESI discovery contemplated by the inspection, copying, testing and sampling provisions of Rule 34(a)(1)(A).”  Ultimately, however, he also stated as follows:

“Consideration of the defendants’ ESI motion in a manner consistent with the forgoing discovery rules, standards and principles, compels the following findings and conclusions:

(1) nothing in the record suggests any willful failure, fault or bad faith by the plaintiff on her discovery obligations that would justify the requested computer forensics examination;

(2) the “mirror-imaging” of the plaintiff’s family computers three years after her termination raises significant issues of confidentiality and privacy;

(3) there was no duty on the part of the plaintiff to preserve her family computers as evidence,

(4) principles of proportionality direct that the requested discovery is not sufficiently important to warrant the potential burden or expense in this case; and

(5) on the current record that the defendants have failed to justify a broad, and frankly drastic, forensic computer examination of the plaintiff’s two family computers.”

As a result, “even though the defendants have demonstrated a connection between the plaintiff’s two family computers and the issues this lawsuit”, Judge Welsh stated that “the court’s consideration of the several other relevant factors, including the proportionality balance required by Rule 26(b)(2), all weigh heavily against permitting the exhaustive and intrusive computer forensic examination the defendants seek” and denied the defendant’s motion to compel.

So, what do you think?  Should the drives have been imaged or did the defendant’s request fail the proportionality test?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Once Again, It’s Time to Nominate Your Favorite Law Blog – eDiscovery Trends
 

It’s that time of year!  If you have a favorite law blog (or “blawg”, get it?), now is the time to nominate it for recognition in the ABA Journal 8th Annual Blawg 100.

On their Blawg 100 Amici page, you can complete the form to identify yourself, your employer or law school, your city and email address, the URL of the blog you wish to nominate, a link to a great 2013 post from the blog and a brief (up to 500 characters) description as to why you’re a fan of the “blawg”.  You’re also asked whether you know the “blawgger” personally (and admonished to “be honest”), whether ABA Journal can use your name and comment in their coverage and, if you follow the blogger on Twitter, describe what makes him/her stand out.  You can nominate more than one “blawg”.

ABA Journal notes that they discourage submissions from:

  • Bloggers who nominate their own blogs or nominate blogs to which they have previously contributed posts.
  • Employees of law firms who nominate blogs written by their co-workers.
  • Public relations professionals in the employ of lawyers or law firms who nominate their clients’ blogs.
  • Pairs of bloggers who have clearly entered into a quid pro quo agreement to nominate each other.

Friend-of-the-blawg briefs (i.e., to fill and submit the form) are due by no later than Aug. 8, 2014 to include your nomination.

If you have enjoyed reading eDiscovery Daily over the past year and found our blog to be informative, we would love to be recognized!  Feel free to click on the link here to nominate us!  We appreciate the consideration!

There are other excellent legal technology blogs out there.  Here are a few of our favorites.  Feel free to nominate them too.  🙂

For compilations of eDiscovery news and analysis, I’d also like to recognize PinHawk Law Technology Daily Digest and Complex Discovery as excellent sources for eDiscovery information.

Our hats are off to all of those who provide eDiscovery news and analysis to the industry!  Again, if you would like to nominate any of the blogs (including, of course, eDiscovery Daily), click here.  Deadline is August 8.

So, what do you think?  Do you have a favorite eDiscovery blog or source of information?  Share it with our readers!  And, please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.