An old client gave me a good karma call (otherwise known as free consulting). She wanted my thoughts on how they could minimize the potential litigation and discovery cost of the inevitable workers comp and personal injury claims after employees contracted Covid-19 after returning to in person work. The best safety, sanitation and social distancing work practices will only minimize how rapidly or widely [...]
I was reading a well researched news story in the aftermath of the Fort Lauderdale protests that turned into a violent confrontation between police and protesters. Several items caught my attention that could have impact on events that result in litigation/discovery during this time of discord. Body Worn Cameras (BWC) and video surveillance are more commonplace now than ever. Many of my industrial clients require that certain employees wear BWCs or have vehicle/facility cameras that operate on similar technologies. I intend to stay away from politics on essays in the eDiscovery Journal. As a former police criminalist I am very interested in evolving technologies to record and reconstruct incidents. In this and many other recent confrontations, police departments state that BWC footage is not available because the cameras were not turned on. Let’s discuss what data is available to an investigator or requesting party.
Stephen E. Arnold’s latest blog on flaky enterprise search reports resonated with my own frustration at the steady stream of eDiscovery market reports press releases showing up in my daily search feeds. I have followed Arnold’s blog for years because of his deep understanding of the enterprise search market. He bluntly calls out the lack of attribution or substance in the reports hidden behind the paywall. I ran down one of the recent eDiscovery Market Forecast 2020-2025 reports blasted out by something called Aeresearch, ‘Powered by Market Study Report, LLC.’ Sounds like another Gartner/Forrester wanna-be, right? Not hardly.
If you are anything like me, you get 10-100 emails per day with eDiscovery press announcements, marketing blasts, webinars and more. Back in 2008 I built a Google CSE to manage the firehose of information and make sure that I kept up with the market. The original eDiscoveryJournal.com used that search engine to create a feed that we culled, curated, classified and commented on. [...]
Since March, most corporate counsel and discovery response teams have been working remotely. The global pandemic may have paused or slowed many civil courts, regulators and auditors, but not all. Many of my long term corporate clients issued work stoppage orders to control costs and gather information on the potential impact of the pandemic. It is now clear that social distancing and travel restrictions [...]
Over the decades I have worked with the Big Four Accounting firms in a variety of roles. Heck, some folks in the firms used to refer me to their audit clients that needed eDiscovery/IG process and system consulting. The line between auditor, accountant and other professional services was simpler before the firms started buying or building eDiscovery service bureaus. Given the volume based industry [...]