E-Discovery Lawyer & Attorney : Quarles & Brady Law Firm : Electronic Discovery, Data Preservation, Conversion, Computer Forensics

Legal Tech 2008  starts today in New York City and looks to be not only an opportunity to meet and assess vendors of e-discovery and related information technology services but also a veritable clearinghouse of helpful information on e-discovery issues.  The schedule this year includes several interesting - and, doubtless, highly informative - panel presentations on key legal and technological issues relevant to e-discovery, including:

• best practices for data storage, retention, identification, retrieval and review;
• privilege issues particular to electronically-stored information;
• issues implicated by offshore outsourcing of ESI review, including international ediscovery rules and standards;
• readiness and strategic planning;
• choosing an e-discovery platform;
• cost management; and
• particular evidentiary issues raised by ESI.

If you can't make New York in February (brrrrr), Legal Tech arrives in Los Angeles June 26-27, 2008.

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With the availability of new technologies, tracking e-discovery cases does not have to be a chore. Although many blogs and websites follow the trail of the latest e-discovery developments, only a few services can actually deliver the desired results.

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For those of you with time on your hands and who are interested in the IT aspect of ediscovery, there's a new book entitled "Never Talk When You Can Nod. Compliance, eDiscovery And Enterprise Content Management Systems". Authored by Andrew Chapman, Director of the EMC Documentum Compliance Solutions Group, EMC Corp., the book attempts to delineate the critical relationship between enterprise content management (CM) and ediscovery (ED) issues ...

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One area of the electronic discovery process that is particularly time consuming and costly is the transfer of electronically stored information (ESI) to and from applications involved in different phases of the discovery process.  For example, if parties agree to produce electronic information in TIFF format, Excel Spreadsheets, PDFs and Outlook e-mails may be required to be converted to TIFF files.  The conversion to a single format can be extremely costly and time consuming.  In October 2007, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) announced a new Extensible Markup Language (XML) standard for the easy transfer of electronically stored information.

EDRM is an industry group that was created to develop practical standards for the e-discovery industry.  EDRM hopes that as the XML standard is adopted in the industry, the e-discovery process will become more efficient and effective as the movement and storage of electronically stored information becomes more streamlined. For a description of the XML standard, and for more helpful information, see this article from Newstex blog and LexisNexis.  And stay tuned to see if theory becomes reality with the proposed standard. 

 

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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?

In a recent article in Inside Counsel, the author explored the growing options for software to send “registered email.” In this article the need for authenticated email is explored in two different scenarios, to prove insurance claims, and to admit emails in accordance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Lorraine v. Markel).

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What on earth does "native production" mean?  Is a "terabyte" a lot of data to produce?  How does the process of "deduplication" work?  OCR, PDF, TIFF, RAM, ambient data, back-up tapes, metadata . . . who decided this e-discovery thing is a good thing? 

If you're talking to your IT folks and they seem to be speaking in an entirely different language, you might want to check out some of the glossaries that have been put together on the technical language that your IT department is bound to use as you begin discussing EDD a/k/a electronic document discovery (I guess the lawyers have their own language too!):

EDRM Discovery Reference Model

The Sedona Conference

Kroll Ontrack

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Robert Ambrogi over on the Legal Technology pages of Law.com has assembled a nice listing of all of the blogs out there that are covering e-discovery issues:  EDD Blogs.  Between our blog and the blogs listed in Mr. Ambrogi's article, you should be able to stay up to date on all of the late breaking e-discovery news and cases.

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Federal Rule 30(b)(6) depositions of the "person most knowledgeable" are nothing new.  Rule 30(b)(6) depositions have, however, taken on additional significance in the age of electronic record-keeping and electronic discovery.  Where before litigants employed the "Keeper of Records" deposition to authenticate documents, litigants are now turning to Rule 30(b)(6) depositions to address the often complex issues of electronic data preservation and production.   As a result, companies need to consider e-discovery issues when selecting a "person most knowledgeable" for Rule 30(b)(6) depositions pertaining to electronic preservation and production matters.  Failure to select someone who can speak to the complex technological mechanisms utilized to satisfy e-discovery obligations could result in prolonged litigation and costly disputes over spoliation and other electronic document production issues.  So, choose wisely, and consider employing an IT professional at your company for this critical task. 

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