Another good find and commentary by Doug Austin, A Time of Discovery – A History of Electronic Disclosure (Part One). I like how he pointed out how the UK’s disclosure rules were updated in the same time frame as our FRCP amendments. Civil litigation and arbitration rules vary wildly by international venue. That was a big shock to me as a young product manager [...]
Provider pricing and custodial metrics are often impossible to find because so much of the eDiscovery market insists on wrapping sales in NDAs. That can be frustrating to a consultant who specializes in solution proposals, ROI analysis and RFP engagements. So you can imagine how happy I am to share the public details gleaned from digging through the actual order and Casetext’s fabulous synopsis. [...]
As a 30(b)(6) witness for some of my clients, I follow eDiscovery spoliation cases closely. Most of them have little or no ‘teeth’ when a party has even attempted to meet their obligations. It is nice to see a magistrate drop the hammer on a party who appears to have consistently and deliberately tried to hide relevant ESI. The cited order is worth a [...]
Normally I dig through the actual ruling language for new eDiscovery caselaw. In this case my former Symantec alumni has written a great summary of the contested discovery protocols. I refrained from quoting his closing four take-aways, but they are worth a read. What caught my interest here was the defendant’s original strategy to use its “Microsoft Tool” (I bet O365 Advanced eDiscovery) to [...]
The article is a long and rather scholarly coverage of the evolution of the communication privilege. It brings up a couple interesting issues for retention policies and classification systems. First is the need to retain the actual communication wrapper for legal work product to preserve privilege. The proliferation of online meetings, chat and collaboration channels are generally considered informal communications and not addressed by [...]
Sanctions and adverse inference rulings are far too rare in my opinion. That is because far too often opposing productions are not scrutinized and compared against your own collections. Too few counsel run the metrics of key witnesses and wonder why their email counts suddenly dropped or vanished during the critical time frame. Lawyers should practice law and stay focused on evidence and merits [...]
Despite early articles proclaiming a dearth of COVID-19 related lawsuits, the first waves have hit the courts. I was disappointed that a law firm article focused on recommendations that were outdated before it hit the digital presses instead of clear litigation preparedness guidelines. Back in July I outlined some better practices for corporate litigation defense preparations as businesses reopened. My point here is that [...]
How long should you keep ad hoc internal communications? That is the question that bubbled up while listening to the four Big Tech CEO’s trying to explain a few of their 1.3 million emails and internal documents obtained by the House Antitrust Subcommittee's investigation that kicked off June 2019. The vast majority of those exhibits dated from 2010-2012 M&A strategy discussions. We have no [...]
The above snippets are just two good examples of how preservation language and issues have evolved since Craig wrote his first exemplar preservation letter for the community back in 2006. I frequently review client preservation/record management policies, protocols and compliance practices to spot issues such as those called out above. I just wish that every plaintiff wrote their interrogatories and preservation demand letters in [...]