E-discovery requests automatically unduly burdensome?
This really happened recently. I was having a Rule 26(f) conference and, as I am supposed to, I said the words (gasp) e-discovery. The response? The response was to suggest that they were already contemplating that I would be asking for far more than what is reasonably necessary and that they already anticipated there would be problems.
So they were objecting before the discovery was even served at the mere mention of the word "e-discovery"? Do they already have the response to my first motion to compel drafted? (Perhaps I should serve such a motion to compel with the requests and streamline the whole process).
No doubt this is the strategy many will employ, but believe it or not, in some cases, the issues are fairly discreet, the list of players reasonably short, and e-discovery is not that hard. Let's all remember to object in good faith.
In a recent and previously sealed federal fraud and tax evasion case (
In a time when email is increasingly used for correspondence once reserved for snail mail, what do you do when you need to be sure the other party received your correspondence? Many law firms and corporations still use regular certified mail, return receipt requested. But what if that is impractical?
Dates can be crucial in litigation. Cases are won or lost on whether the right things happened at the right time. Accordingly, we often use documents to construct our chronologies early in the case and move for summary judgment. But dates on electronically stored documents may not always be what they seem. For example, at first glance, one may assume that a date on an electronically stored document is the creation date or distribution date. Maybe its far from either. 
Much of the data stored on computers, such as the data stored in random access memory (RAM) and internet caches, is temporary and "ephemeral". Because these temporary, transient files are deleted as often as every few hours, it would seem that there would not be a duty to preserve them.