Essays

It has been a topic du jour, but social media discovery does not seem to be gaining the mindshare one might expect given the explosion in usage of social media. Almost 65% of respondents in eDJ’s social experience survey indicate using external social networks (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) at work. I will not go into the litany of case law regarding the discoverability of social media in criminal and civil litigation. There are many JDs out there more qualified to dig into precedents and what they mean. Suffice it to say that social media is potentially discoverable and ignoring it could lead to sanctions, adverse inferences, and higher than expected eDiscovery costs.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: . Published: 2013-05-28 09:29:17  Fresh from getting off the plane from NYC and a day to get my laundry done, I hopped on a plane to Los Angeles to attend my first LegalTech West conference at the Westin Bonaventure.  I hadn’t been to the Bonaventure in about 10 years and was glad to see the upgrades they recently made.I was [...]

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Mikki Tomlinson. Published: 2013-06-03 09:23:29  The preliminary results of eDJ’s Legal Hold Notification 2013 Survey are in.  The survey shows that 45% of the 106 respondents rated their procedures “mature” for issue and release of legal holds.  However, only 23% of respondents indicated that they have mature audit and reporting capabilities.I have preached many times that “you can’t manage what [...]

When a client recently asked my opinion of the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on corporate IT, I had to do that thing that consultants hate and admit that I had not even considered it. I knew that the ‘Wall Street Reform and Consumer Act’ was passed in reaction to the 2008 economic downturn, but the new requirements that I had researched all applied to my financial clients; banks, hedge funds, broker dealers or others already regulated by the SEC or CFTC. Then Dodd-Frank came up in an analyst briefing with a provider who was eager to burn analyst credits to get our perspective. That was enough for Babs Deacon and I to subject ourselves to large chunks of the 2,300 page law signed July 21, 2010 as well as an incredible array of secondary analysis scattered amongst the 13.3 million Google hits. The lack of blogs, reports or articles that actually applied to non-financial corporate IT gave the initial impression that the majority of public corporations were off the hook. Then I found an SEC statement that described the Act as “a framework that will support an entirely new regulatory regime”.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: . Published: 2013-06-05 09:00:43  An area of great interest for me is international eDiscovery.  I spent quite a bit of time in Europe in the mid-2000's doing forensic collections and onsite projects as well as serving the first couple of years on the Sedona International Working Group (WG6).   It was my experience that when dealing with data privacy issues in [...]

Indications are that eDiscovery solution purchases are about to become more strategic in nature. A decade ago, it was not uncommon to see non-competitive bids for eDiscovery business because so many purchases were reactive and made under intense time pressure. In the past several months, however, the inquiries from clients have become more intelligent and more specific – a sure sign that folks are getting ready to make more strategic investments in software and services.

My definition of Dark Data differs from Wikipedia:“Data relevant to a discovery request that is either never disclosed or is produced without contextual information that could affect the interpretation of that data.” My first interview on cloud sources as discovery targets turned up surprising frustration from the savvy eDiscovery Counsel for a national plaintiffs firm. I expected to hear about immature collection capabilities and defendant’s who struggled to preserve or collect from Office 365, SalesForce or other cloud systems. I did not expect that requesting parties might be completely in the dark about where a production comes from or how it was collected. eDJ’s consultants have had too many recent engagements supporting the evaluation or migration of email and files to the cloud to doubt the trend. Microsoft has been touting the rapid adoption of Office 365 with corporate and public sector verticals. Many corporations seem to have moved critical ESI to the cloud without a clear plan to meet eDiscovery and Information Governance requirements.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Mikki Tomlinson. Published: 2013-06-18 11:53:55  How many times have you participated in a conversation about a legal hold directive that starts with “You want me to hold what?”  My guess is likely not enough.   This was a hot topic at the eDJ Boot Camp on Legal Hold held in Atlanta earlier this month.  It was also a point of discussion [...]

Last week was the Today’s General Counsel Institute “Corporate Exchange” event in Chicago. I hadn’t been to one of their events in a while and I expected the discussion to range across all phases of discovery, but actually it centered around Preservation. And why not? If you don’t get the identification/preservation right it can be “Tilt” (also known as Spoliation), “Game Over!” “Do not pass go” Go directly to Sanctions or worse, an adverse inference.

eDJ’s new report, “Predictive Information Governance: The Time Has Come,” looks at how Predictive IG works and how it can positively impact multiple use-cases.