eDiscovery Journal

.Fluid Office Files – Are You Ready for Them?

Fluid Office files are Microsoft’s next generation of dynamic collaboration documents for Teams Chat and other communication channels. Multiple users will be able to simultaneously edit tables, agendas and task lists within M365 online mailbox, SharePoint sites and Teams chats. “Google Docs on steroids” indeed. Thankfully, the default OneDrive and SharePoint storage locations mean that existing preservation functionality covers new .Fluid files created by [...]

By Greg Buckles|2021-10-04T14:01:18-05:00October 4th, 2021|Provider, Essay, Corporate, Firm, Collection, Processing, ESI Sources, Architecture|0 Comments

IPRO-ZyLAB: Further eDiscovery Consolidation

Yet another acquisition in the accelerating consolidation of the eDiscovery market space. In this case there is some functional overlap offset by clear differentiation in solution strengths. In my opinion, both players peaked early in the eDiscovery market and were being left behind until recently. Maybe the ParkerGale Capital money and guidance will forge a real competitor to the evolving Relativity-Reveal-Exterro battle royal. For [...]

By Greg Buckles|2021-07-14T10:09:43-05:00July 14th, 2021|Info Gov, Platform, Europe, Investigation, News, Preservation, Collectors, Legal Holds, Collection|0 Comments

Teams Collections Complications – MC261534

M365 Teams collections are already challenging corporate eDiscovery and provider teams with hidden SharePoint and OneDrive sites. Today’s Major Change Update Notification (MC261534 - reproduced at end for non-admins) covers the June-July roll out of Roadmap ID 81945 that dramatically expands custodian’s ability to associate existing/other Teams sites and automatically create private channel sites. More importantly, non-admin custodians are losing the ability to manually [...]

By Greg Buckles|2021-06-14T10:55:15-05:00June 14th, 2021|Info Gov, Investigation, Essay, Preservation, Collectors, Collection, Legal Holds, Content Management, ESI Sources, Architecture, Search|0 Comments

Teams Transcripts – eDiscovery Gap

Teams transcripts are not currently available in M365 Content Search, eDiscovery or via the Graph API. As previously blogged about, Microsoft is busy consolidating the Microsoft 365 architecture to improve search and other functionality. There are obvious issues with working on the car while your customers are driving it, even when it is the most efficient solution. As of October 2020, the default Teams [...]

By Greg Buckles|2021-06-09T16:10:47-05:00June 9th, 2021|Essay, Collectors, Collection, Legal Holds, Processing, ESI Sources, Search|0 Comments

Dodging Deserved Spoliation Sanctions

Although it appears that the jury will hear about the defendants bad acts, I am disappointed that the court declined the harsher subsection (e)(2) because the plaintiffs did not have evidence of intent. This ruling could temp corporations to ‘lose’ encryption keys rather than deal with evidence. I bet that if you had all the various communications between the key players you would find [...]

By Greg Buckles|2021-06-03T14:43:36-05:00June 3rd, 2021|Federal, Caselaw, News, Collection|0 Comments

Ongoing M365 Tenant Upgrades/Migrations

Last year I found and published eDiscovery/Content search errors related to Microsoft 365’s ongoing changes to tenant search infrastructure and the new version of Advanced eDiscovery (AED). I have recently encountered similar AED search issues after another way of upgrades was rolled out to new clients. Given the monstrous global scale of corporate M365 adoption, it is entirely possible that this is the same [...]

By Greg Buckles|2021-05-24T16:07:44-05:00May 24th, 2021|Essay, Preservation, Collection, Content Management, Search|0 Comments

M365 Advanced eDiscovery Spring Update

Microsoft’s Information & Protection teams are rolling out Advanced eDiscovery(AED) updates at a remarkable rate. The product team’s April 7th webinar and presentation deck has not yet been published, but I wanted to share some perspectives on how these updates may impact AED users. The pandemic has driven E5 license upgrades and features to support remote employees, which makes AED usage more practical for [...]

By Greg Buckles|2021-04-14T13:03:28-05:00April 14th, 2021|Platform, United States, Analytics, Essay, Collectors, Collection, Legal Holds, Processing, Analysis, Review, Architecture, Search|0 Comments

Sanctions for eDiscovery Incompetence – Finally

Disdain and frustration fills the 256 page opinion from US District Judge Iain D. Johnston sanctioning defense counsel and defendant. The Gibbons Law Alert summary manages to convey some of this, rightfully calling it “a veritable Keystone Kops series of discovery errors and misrepresentations spanning several years.” Judge Johnston’s righteous ire over counsel’s ‘indifference’ and ‘incompetence’ regarding the defendant’s behavior that resulted in incomplete [...]

By Greg Buckles|2021-03-30T10:55:40-05:00March 30th, 2021|Caselaw, Essay, Preservation, Compliance, Collection|2 Comments

M365 AED Collections – Not Actually Collected

The latest update to the M365 Advanced eDiscovery console is on their way to your or your client’s tenant. While this change seems to be primarily cosmetic (renaming Searches to Collections tab), there are some important things going on under the surface. In my recent blog on Handling M365 Unindexed Content I explained how AED automatically processes and reindexes partially or unindexed items placed [...]

By Greg Buckles|2021-03-18T16:07:17-05:00March 18th, 2021|Essay, Collectors, Preservation, Legal Holds, Collection, Processing, Review, Architecture|0 Comments

What is Your Messaging App Tracking?

In the days of on-site policy assessment engagements, I loved asking random attendees to step away from their laptops so that I could ‘compliance check’ them. For new or stuffy clients I would ask the MIS/Security stakeholder to pick some random ‘safe’ machines on the floor for the check. Inevitably, every poor admin chosen had stashes of PSTs/MSGs, private gmail mailboxes open, various chat [...]

By Greg Buckles|2021-01-11T14:59:12-06:00January 11th, 2021|Investigation, Essay, Collectors, Preservation, Legal Holds, Collection, Processing, ESI Sources|0 Comments