Close
Enter your
text here

Identification

Our 1,000th Post! – eDiscovery Milestones

When we launched nearly four years ago on September 20, 2010, our goal was to be a daily resource for eDiscovery news and analysis.  Now, after doing so each business day (except for one), I’m happy to announce that today is our 1,000th post on eDiscovery Daily!

We’ve covered the gamut in eDiscovery, from case law to industry trends to best practices.  Here are some of the categories that we’ve covered and the number of posts (to date) for each:

We’ve also covered every phase of the EDRM (177) life cycle, including:

Every post we have published is still available on the site for your reference, which has made eDiscovery Daily into quite a knowledgebase!  We’re quite proud of that.

Comparing our first three months of existence to now, we have seen traffic on our site grow an amazing 474%!  Our subscriber base has more than tripled in the last three years!  We want to take this time to thank you, our readers and subcribers, for making that happen.  Thanks for making the eDiscoveryDaily blog a regular resource for your eDiscovery news and analysis!  We really appreciate the support!

We also want to thank the blogs and publications that have linked to our posts and raised our public awareness, including Pinhawk, Ride the Lightning, Litigation Support Guru, Complex Discovery, Bryan University, The Electronic Discovery Reading Room, Litigation Support Today, Alltop, ABA Journal, Litigation Support Blog.com, InfoGovernance Engagement Area, EDD Blog Online, eDiscovery Journal, e-Discovery Team ® and any other publication that has picked up at least one of our posts for reference (sorry if I missed any!).  We really appreciate it!

I also want to extend a special thanks to Jane Gennarelli, who has provided some serial topics, ranging from project management to coordinating review teams to what litigation support and discovery used to be like back in the 80’s (to which some of us “old timers” can relate).  Her contributions are always well received and appreciated by the readers – and also especially by me, since I get a day off!

We always end each post with a request: “Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.”  And, we mean it.  We want to cover the topics you want to hear about, so please let us know.

Tomorrow, we’ll be back with a new, original post.  In the meantime, feel free to click on any of the links above and peruse some of our 999 previous posts.  Now is your chance to catch up!  😉

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.

EDRM Updates Privacy & Security Risk Reduction Model – eDiscovery Best Practices

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) continues to pile up the accomplishments. In addition to announcing a transition to nonprofit status by May 2014, since the May annual meeting, several EDRM projects (Metrics, Jobs, Data Set and the new Native Files project) have already announced new deliverables and/or requested feedback and EDRM also published new Collection Standards for collecting electronically stored information (ESI).  Now, EDRM is making updates to earlier accomplishments from just five months ago.

As they announced last week, EDRM announced the reintroduction and refinement of its Privacy & Security Risk Reduction Model (PSRRM). Initially introduced last September by EDRM’s Data Set group (and covered on this blog here), the model provides a process for reducing the volume of private, protected and risky data by using a series of steps applied in sequence as part of the information management, identification, preservation and collection phases of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model.

The PSRRM model is used prior to producing or exporting data containing risky information such as privileged or proprietary information. The middle steps are cyclical and are repeated until the amount of private material is reduced to a desirable amount. The private data is finally quarantined in the final step before the remaining information is produced.

Recent high profile data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus are prime examples to illustrate that high risk data can cause significant trouble and exposure for organizations today.  As their press release notes, EDRM has revised the PSRRM to include industry feedback and real-world experiences using the model in data remediation and eDiscovery projects to help companies address this exposure in an organized and systematic manner.

The current resource page for the PSRRM model is located here.

So, what do you think?  How do you handle security of your organization’s sensitive data?  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.

Search Process for ESI Called into Question, but Court Denies Sanctions for Plaintiff – eDiscovery Case Law
 

In Brown v. West Corp., No. 8:11CV284, 2013 U.S. Dist. (D. Neb. Dec. 4, 2013), the plaintiff filed a motion to compel, claiming the defendant had been insufficient in its handling of searching for Electronically Stored Information (ESI) relevant to discovery. The plaintiff additionally contested a prior order from a magistrate judge, requiring the defendant to explain its search processes to the defendant. Ultimately, Nebraska Senior District Judge Lyle E. Strom denied the requested sanctions and rejected the challenge to the prior order.

The most recent motion saw the plaintiff asking for sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(b), stating that the defendant failed to comply with the prior order, the purpose of which was stated to “lay bare the defendant’s search process and expose any deficiencies that might be a basis for plaintiff’s motion to compel a more stringent search of potentially relevant ESI for preservation.” In addition, the plaintiff asked that additional discovery be permitted.

However, the defendant had in fact complied with the prior order and explained its search processes regarding ESI, noting that its system did not permit a “‘global search’ of all electronic information in West’s possession.” The substance of the magistrate judge’s concerns regarding the prior order had concerned preservation of ESI, and not necessarily discovery requests. Judge Strom noted that the plaintiff had misinterpreted the prior order, and that the defendants had addressed concerns by “explaining the process by which West employees were directed to identify, preserve, and search potentially relevant materials.” Therefore, “the court finds no reason to require more from the defendant by way of evidence of a proper search.”

In the same motion and combined with the efforts to seek expanded discovery, the plaintiff raised two issues of spoliation. One that the defendant had erased the data of three potential custodians who had left the company, and two, that the defendant had failed to halt the automatic deletion of e-mail which may have been relevant to discovery.

Regarding these issues, Judge Strom once again rejected the contentions, stating that the defendant had repurposed the computers of former employees in apparent good faith, and as a regular business practice, “only after making a determination that all of the relevant information stored on those computers was preserved.” Additionally, the objection to automatic email deletion was dismissed because the plaintiff had not identified relevant emails or email categories that are “not subject to defendant’s preservation process or that have been deliberately destroyed in an attempt to thwart discovery.”

Finally, the plaintiff’s request to overturn the magistrate judge’s order that limited discovery to certain custodians was denied. Regarding Federal Rule 26(b), which states in part that requests for discovery should be limited due to “relevance and the balance between likely benefit and the burden on the producing party,” the magistrate judge had found nothing that would “suggest sufficient benefit [to the plaintiff] to warrant the expansive scope of the requested discovery” as outlined by the plaintiff. Such a scope, the magistrate judge felt, would be “grasping at the periphery by reviewing thousands or tens of thousands of emails,” and further that, “a few pointed questions in a deposition [would be] less burdensome.”

So, what do you think?  Should defendants be permitted to limit responses to discovery when producing ESI due to the limitations of their technology? 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.

He Sees You When You’re Sleeping — eDiscovery Trends
 

A recent post in the Law Librarians Blog illustrates not only the different ways in which personal data can be captured, but also the continued growth of devices that might contain that data.

In He Sees You When You’re Sleeping, He Knows When You’re Awake…, the authors discuss potential tracking of mouse movements, current data tracking on smart TVs and even the possibility for data to be kept and tracked on…your toothbrush:

  • An October story from Ars Technica discusses how Facebook is working on a way to log cursor movements, beyond tracking where someone clicks on a page to determine an ad’s effectiveness.  According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook wants to pay attention to the areas a cursor lingers over, even without a click or other interaction.  And, if you’re using a mobile device, Facebook will still be noting when, for instance, “a user’s newsfeed is visible at a given moment on the screen of his or her mobile phone.”
  • Imagine if your toothbrush could keep track of your brushing habits?  According to ZDNet, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff sees that happening.  “Everything is on the Net. And we will be connected in phenomenal new ways," said Benioff. Benioff highlighted how his toothbrush of the future will be connected. The new Philips toothbrush is Wi-Fi based and have GPS. "When I go into the dentist he won't ask if I brushed. He will say what's your login to your Philips account. There will be a whole new level of transparency with my dentist”.
  • One device that is already capturing your personal data is the smart TV, in some cases whether you want it or not.  A blogger in the U.K. has discovered that his LG smart TV sends details about his viewing habits back to LG servers.  Those habits also include the file names of items viewed from a connected USB stick.  There is a setting in the TV that purports to turn this behavior off (it’s on by default).  It doesn’t work as data is forwarded to LG no matter what the setting.  LG’s response to the disclosure was less than reassuring – “The advice we have been given is that unfortunately as you accepted the Terms and Conditions on your TV, your concerns would be best directed to the retailer,” the representatives wrote in a response to the blogger. “We understand you feel you should have been made aware of these T’s and C’s at the point of sale, and for obvious reasons LG are unable to pass comment on their actions.”

Nice.  Imagine a case where, in addition to hard drives and smart phones, data collectors need to perform collection on flatscreen TVs and toothbrushes?  If it sounds farfetched, remember that, several years ago, cell phones didn’t store data and texts didn’t even exist.

So, what do you think?  What is the most unusual device from which you’ve ever collected data?   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.

For Successful Discovery, Think Backwards – eDiscovery Best Practices

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) has become the standard model for the workflow of the process for handling electronically stored information (ESI) in discovery.  But, to succeed in discovery, regardless whether you’re the producing party or the receiving party, it might be helpful to think about the EDRM model backwards.

Why think backwards?

You can’t have a successful outcome without envisioning the successful outcome that you want to achieve.  The end of the discovery process includes the production and presentation stages, so it’s important to determine what you want to get out of those stages.  Let’s look at them.

Presentation

As a receiving party, it’s important to think about what types of evidence you need to support your case when presenting at depositions and at trial – this is the type of information that needs to be included in your production requests at the beginning of the case.

Production

The format of the ESI produced is important to both sides in the case.  For the receiving party, it’s important to get as much useful information included in the production as possible.  This includes metadata and searchable text for the produced documents, typically with an index or load file to facilitate loading into a review application.  The most useful form of production is native format files with all metadata preserved as used in the normal course of business.

For the producing party, it’s important to save costs, so it’s important to agree to a production format that minimizes production costs.  Converting files to an image based format (such as TIFF) adds costs, so producing in native format can be cost effective for the producing party as well.  It’s also important to determine how to handle issues such as privilege logs and redaction of privileged or confidential information.

Addressing production format issues up front will maximize cost savings and enable each party to get what they want out of the production of ESI.

Processing-Review-Analysis

It also pays to determine early in the process about decisions that affect processing, review and analysis.  How should exception files be handled?  What do you do about files that are infected with malware?  These are examples of issues that need to be decided up front to determine how processing will be handled.

As for review, the review tool being used may impact production specs in terms of how files are viewed and production of load files that are compatible with the review tool, among other considerations.  As for analysis, surely you test search terms to determine their effectiveness before you agree on those terms with opposing counsel, right?

Preservation-Collection-Identification

Long before you have to conduct preservation and collection for a case, you need to establish procedures for implementing and monitoring litigation holds, as well as prepare a data map to identify where corporate information is stored for identification, preservation and collection purposes.

As you can see, at the beginning of a case (and even before), it’s important to think backwards within the EDRM model to ensure a successful discovery process.  Decisions made at the beginning of the case affect the success of those latter stages, so don’t forget to think backwards!

So, what do you think?  What do you do at the beginning of a case to ensure success at the end?   Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

P.S. — Notice anything different about the EDRM graphic?

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.

A Model for Reducing Private Data – eDiscovery Best Practices

Since the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) annual meeting just four short months ago in May, several EDRM projects (Metrics, Jobs, Data Set and the new Native Files project) have already announced new deliverables and/or requested feedback.  Now, the Data Set project has announced another new deliverable – a new Privacy Risk Reduction Model.

Announced in yesterday’s press release, the new model “is a process for reducing the volume of private, protected and risky data by using a series of steps applied in sequence as part of the information management, identification, preservation and collection phases” of the EDRM.  It “is used prior to producing or exporting data containing risky information such as privileged or proprietary information.”

The model uses a series of six steps applied in sequence with the middle four steps being performed as an iterative process until the amount of private information is reduced to a desirable level.  Here are the steps as described on the EDRM site:

  • Define Risk: Risk is initially identified by an organization by stakeholders who can quantify the specific risks a particular class or type of data may pose. For example, risky data may include personally identifiable information (PII) such as credit card numbers, attorney-client privileged communications or trade secrets.
  • Identify Available Data: Locations and types of risky data should be identified. Possible locations may include email repositories, backups, email and data archives, file shares, individual workstations and laptops, and portable storage devices. The quantity and type should also be specified.
  • Create Filters: Search methods and filters are created to ‘catch’ risky data. They may include keyword, data range, file type, subject line etc.
  • Run Filters: The filters are executed and the results evaluated for accuracy.
  • Verify Output: The data identified or captured by the filters is compared against the anticipated output. If the filters did not catch all the expected risky data, additional filters can be created or existing filters can be refined and the process run again. Additionally, the output from the filters may identify additional risky data or data sources in which case this new data should be subjected the risk reduction process.
  • Quarantine: After an acceptable amount of risky data has been identified through the process, it should be quarantined from the original data sets. This may be done through migration of non-risky data, or through extraction or deletion of the risky data from the original data set.

No EDRM model would be complete without a handy graphic to illustrate the process so, as you can see above, this model includes one that illustrates the steps as well as the risk-time continuum (not to be confused with the space-time continuum, relatively speaking)… 😉

Looks like a sound process, it will be interesting to see it in use.  Hopefully, it will enable the Data Set team to avoid some of the “controversy” experienced during the process of removing private data from the Enron data set.  Kudos to the Data Set team, including project co-leaders Michael Lappin, director of archiving strategy at Nuix, and Eric Robi, president of Elluma Discovery!

So, what do you think?  What do you think of the process?   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 Daily is Three Years Old!

We’ve always been free, now we are three!

It’s hard to believe that it has been three years ago today since we launched the eDiscoveryDaily blog.  We’re past the “terrible twos” and heading towards pre-school.  Before you know it, we’ll be ready to take our driver’s test!

We have seen traffic on our site (from our first three months of existence to our most recent three months) grow an amazing 575%!  Our subscriber base has grown over 50% in the last year alone!  Back in June, we hit over 200,000 visits on the site and now we have over 236,000!

We continue to appreciate the interest you’ve shown in the topics and will do our best to continue to provide interesting and useful posts about eDiscovery trends, best practices and case law.  That’s what this blog is all about.  And, in each post, we like to ask for you to “please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic”, so we encourage you to do so to make this blog even more useful.

We also want to thank the blogs and publications that have linked to our posts and raised our public awareness, including Pinhawk, Ride the Lightning, Litigation Support Guru, Complex Discovery, Bryan College, The Electronic Discovery Reading Room, Litigation Support Today, Alltop, ABA Journal, Litigation Support Blog.com, Litigation Support Technology & News, InfoGovernance Engagement Area, EDD Blog Online, eDiscovery Journal, Learn About E-Discovery, e-Discovery Team ® and any other publication that has picked up at least one of our posts for reference (sorry if I missed any!).  We really appreciate it!

As many of you know by now, we like to take a look back every six months at some of the important stories and topics during that time.  So, here are some posts over the last six months you may have missed.  Enjoy!

Rodney Dangerfield might put it this way – “I Tell Ya, Information Governance Gets No Respect”

Is it Time to Ditch the Per Hour Model for Document Review?  Here’s some food for thought.

Is it Possible for a File to be Modified Before it is Created?  Maybe, but here are some mechanisms for avoiding that scenario (here, here, here, here, here and here).  Best of all, they’re free.

Did you know changes to the Federal eDiscovery Rules are coming?  Here’s some more information.

Count Minnesota and Kansas among the states that are also making changes to support eDiscovery.

By the way, since the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) annual meeting back in May, several EDRM projects (Metrics, Jobs, Data Set and the new Native Files project) have already announced new deliverables and/or requested feedback.

When it comes to electronically stored information (ESI), ensuring proper chain of custody tracking is an important part of handling that ESI through the eDiscovery process.

Do you self-collect?  Don’t Forget to Check for Image Only Files!

The Files are Already Electronic, How Hard Can They Be to Load?  A sound process makes it easier.

When you remove a virus from your collection, does it violate your discovery agreement?

Do you think that you’ve read everything there is to read on Technology Assisted Review?  If you missed anything, it’s probably here.

Consider using a “SWOT” analysis or Decision Tree for better eDiscovery planning.

If you’re an eDiscovery professional, here is what you need to know about litigation.

BTW, eDiscovery Daily has had 242 posts related to eDiscovery Case Law since the blog began!  Forty-four of them have been in the last six months.

Our battle cry for next September?  “Four more years!”  🙂

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.

More Updates from the EDRM Annual Meeting – eDiscovery Trends

Yesterday, we discussed some general observations from the Annual Meeting for the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) group and discussed some significant efforts and accomplishments by the (suddenly heavily talked about) EDRM Data Set project.  Here are some updates from other projects within EDRM.

It should be noted these are summary updates and that most of the focus on these updates is on accomplishments for the past year and deliverables that are imminent.  Over the next few weeks, eDiscovery Daily will cover each project in more depth with more details regarding planned activities for the coming year.

Model Code of Conduct (MCoC)

The MCoC was introduced in 2011 and became available for organizations to subscribe last year.  To learn more about the MCoC, you can read the code online here, or download it as a 22 page PDF file here.  Subscribing is easy!  To voluntarily subscribe to the MCoC, you can register on the EDRM website here.  Identify your organization, provide information for an authorized representative and answer four verification questions (truthfully, of course) to affirm your organization’s commitment to the spirit of the MCoC, and your organization is in!  You can also provide a logo for EDRM to include when adding you to the list of subscribing organizations.  Pending a survey of EDRM members to determine if any changes are needed, this project has been completed.  Team leaders include Eric Mandel of Zelle Hofmann, Kevin Esposito of Rivulex and Nancy Wallrich.

Information Governance Reference Model (IGRM)

The IGRM team has continued to make strides and improvements on an already terrific model.  Last October, they unveiled the release of version 3.0 of the IGRM.  As their press release noted, “The updated model now includes privacy and security as primary functions and stakeholders in the effective governance of information.”  IGRM continues to be one of the most active and well participated EDRM projects.  This year, the early focus – as quoted from Judge Andrew Peck’s keynote speech at Legal Tech this past year – is “getting rid of the junk”.  Project leaders are Aliye Ergulen from IBM, Reed Irvin from Viewpointe and Marcus Ledergerber from Morgan Lewis.

Search

One of the best examples of the new, more agile process for creating deliverables within EDRM comes from the Search team, which released its new draft Computer Assisted Review Reference Model (CARRM), which depicts the flow for a successful Computer Assisted Review project. The entire model was created in only a matter of weeks.  Early focus for the Search project for the coming year includes adjustments to CARRM (based on feedback at the annual meeting).  You can also still send your comments regarding the model to mail@edrm.net or post them on the EDRM site here.  A webinar regarding CARRM is also planned for late July.  Kudos to the Search team, including project leaders Dominic Brown of Autonomy and also Jay Lieb of kCura, who got unmerciful ribbing for insisting (jokingly, I think) that TIFF files, unlike Generalissimo Francisco Franco, are still alive.  🙂

Jobs

In late January, the Jobs Project announced the release of the EDRM Talent Task Matrix diagram and spreadsheet, which is available in XLSX or PDF format. As noted in their press release, the Matrix is a tool designed to help hiring managers better understand the responsibilities associated with common eDiscovery roles. The Matrix maps responsibilities to the EDRM framework, so eDiscovery duties associated can be assigned to the appropriate parties.  Project leader Keith Tom noted that next steps include surveying EDRM members regarding the Matrix, requesting and co-authoring case-studies and white papers, and creating a short video on how to use the Matrix.

Metrics

In today’s session, the Metrics project team unveiled the first draft of the new Metrics model to EDRM participants!  Feedback was provided during the session and the team will make the model available for additional comments from EDRM members over the next week or so, with a goal of publishing for public comments in the next two to three weeks.  The team is also working to create a page to collect Metrics measurement tools from eDiscovery professionals that can benefit the eDiscovery community as a whole.  Project leaders Dera Nevin of TD Bank and Kevin Clark noted that June is “budget calculator month”.

Other Initiatives

As noted yesterday, there is a new project to address standards for working with native files in the different EDRM phases led by Eric Mandel from Zelle Hofmann and also a new initiative to establish collection guidelines, spearheaded by Julie Brown from Vorys.  There is also an effort underway to refocus the XML project, as it works to complete the 2.0 version of the EDRM XML model.  In addition, there was quite a spirited discussion as to where EDRM is heading as it approaches ten years of existence and it will be interesting to see how the EDRM group continues to evolve over the next year or so.  As you can see, a lot is happening within the EDRM group – there’s a lot more to it than just the base Electronic Discovery Reference Model.

So, what do you think?  Are you a member of EDRM?  If not, why not?  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.

Reporting from the EDRM Annual Meeting and a Data Set Update – eDiscovery Trends

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Project was created in May 2005 by George Socha of Socha Consulting LLC and Tom Gelbmann of Gelbmann & Associates to address the lack of standards and guidelines in the electronic discovery market.  Now, beginning its ninth year of operation with its annual meeting in St. Paul, MN, EDRM is accomplishing more than ever to address those needs.  Here are some highlights from the meeting, and an update regarding the (suddenly heavily talked about) EDRM Data Set project.

Annual Meeting

Twice a year, in May and October, eDiscovery professionals who are EDRM members meet to continue the process of working together on various standards projects.  This will be my eighth year participating in EDRM at some level and, oddly enough, I’m assisting with PR and promotion (how am I doing so far?).  eDiscovery Daily has referenced EDRM and its phases many times in the 2 1/2 years plus history of the blog – this is our 144th post that relates to EDRM!

Some notable observations about today’s meeting:

  • New Participants: More than half the attendees at this year’s annual meeting are attending for the first time.  EDRM is not just a core group of “die-hards”, it continues to find appeal with eDiscovery professionals throughout the industry.
  • Agile Approach: EDRM has adopted an Agile approach to shorten the time to complete and publish deliverables, a change in philosophy that facilitated several notable accomplishments from working groups over the past year including the Model Code of Conduct (MCoC), Information Governance Reference Model (IGRM), Search and Jobs (among others).  More on that tomorrow.
  • Educational Alliances: For the first time, EDRM has formed some interesting and unique educational alliances.  In April, EDRM teamed with the University of Florida Levin College of Law to present a day and a half conference entitled E-Discovery for the Small and Medium Case.  And, this June, EDRM will team with Bryan University to provide an in-depth, four-week E-Discovery Software & Applied Skills Summer Immersion Program for Law School Students.
  • New Working Group: A new working group to be lead by Eric Mandel of Zelle Hoffman was formed to address standards for working with native files in the different EDRM phases.

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss the highlights for most of the individual working groups.  Given the recent amount of discussion about the EDRM Data Set group, we’ll start with that one today!

Data Set

The EDRM Enron Data Set has been around for several years and has been a valuable resource for eDiscovery software demonstration and testing (we covered it here back in January 2011).  The data in the EDRM Enron PST Data Set files is sourced from the FERC Enron Investigation release made available by Lockheed Martin Corporation.  It was reconstituted as PST files with attachments for the EDRM Data Set Project.  So, in essence EDRM took already public domain available data and made the data much more usable.  Initially, the data was made available for download on the EDRM site, then subsequently moved to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In the past several days, there has been much discussion about the personally-identifiable information (“PII”) available within the FERC (and consequently the EDRM Data Set), including social security numbers, credit card numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and phone numbers.  Consequently, the EDRM Data Set has been taken down from the AWS site.

The Data Set team led by Michael Lappin of Nuix and Eric Robi of Elluma Discovery has been working on a process (using predictive coding technology) to identify and remove the PII data from the EDRM Data Set.  Discussions about this process began months ago, prior to the recent discussions about the PII data contained within the set.  The team has completed this iterative process for V1 of the data set (which contains 1,317,158 items), identifying and removing 10,568 items with PII, HIPAA and other sensitive information.  This version of the data set will be made available within the EDRM community shortly for peer review testing.  The data set team will then repeat the process for the larger V2 version of the data set (2,287,984 items).  A timetable for republishing both sets should be available soon and the efforts of the Data Set team on this project should pay dividends in developing and standardizing processes for identifying and eliminating sensitive data that eDiscovery professionals can use in their own data sets.

The team has also implemented a Forensic Files Testing Project site where users can upload their own “modern”, non-copyrighted file samples that are typically encountered during electronic discovery processing to provide a more diverse set of data than is currently available within the Enron data set.

So, what do you think?  How has EDRM impacted how you manage eDiscovery?  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 Daily Is Thirty! (Months Old, That Is)

Thirty months ago yesterday, eDiscovery Daily was launched.  It’s hard to believe that it has been 2 1/2 years since our first three posts that debuted on our first day.  635 posts later, a lot has happened in the industry that we’ve covered.  And, yes we’re still crazy after all these years for committing to a daily post each business day, but we still haven’t missed a business day yet.  Twice a year, we like to take a look back at some of the important stories and topics during that time.  So, here are just a few of the posts over the last six months you may have missed.  Enjoy!

In addition, Jane Gennarelli has been publishing an excellent series to introduce new eDiscovery professionals to the litigation process and litigation terminology.  Here is the latest post, which includes links to the previous twenty one posts.

Thanks for noticing us!  We’ve nearly quadrupled our readership since the first six month period and almost septupled (that’s grown 7 times in size!) our subscriber base since those first six months!  We appreciate the interest you’ve shown in the topics and will do our best to continue to provide interesting and useful eDiscovery news and analysis.  And, as always, 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.