Bookmark this page to monitor the latest news and get our insight into the technology
developments, court rulings and related issues that affect your business.
Looking at the Zubulake case, its
likely that cost sharing for electronic discovery projects won't be as
available to producing parties as once thought. The Rowe case set up
general guidelines for cost sharing, and now the Zubulake case made them
more specific.
Ultimately, if a judge smells smoke, there is going to be an order to
restore at least some backup tapes at the producing party's own
expense. The cost sharing won't come into play unless, preliminarily,
there is nothing found, or if there is unusual hardship. Priority for
counsel is to assess backup tapes, and sample and search them.
Quantifying the cost and difficulty of getting this job done is
essential information.
Electronic Records Management
Every advisor and general counsel for medium-to-large
enterprises is thinking about how they keep electronic documents,
particularly e-mail. This is true even of law firms. Attorneys tell
their clients that they need to have effective records management, but
experience shows that the job doesn't get done unless the top managers
have the will to lead it. Counsel must demand the support of upper
management in this effort.
In turn, counsel should demand that experts like Daticon assist in
education and technology integration to get these projects off the
ground, and, along the way, implement a litigation contingency plan.
As a result, business can find and preserve the electronic records
they need, and they can get rid of the rest according to their
retention schedules and compliance requirement.
Searching / Culling
Perhaps the biggest issue in electronic
discovery today is finding and reviewing relevant e-mail among the
vast stores that all corporations have today. The courts are routinely
ordering parties to come up with an agreeable search protocol and
litigators often have to negotiate search terms with regulators or
opposing counsel. To do that, they need good information on the
precision and recall of search terms.
Expert vendors like Daticon are an essential resource to help
attorneys decide whose e-mail they need, and the terms they should
use to get to the relevant material quickly. Knowing the best
methodology in advance can be a distinct advantage in responding
to the courts' demands.
Regulatory Investigations
More regulators today want to see
data in native format. This is true for the SEC, the FDA, the
US Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and various
state attorneys general. They want to see the e-mail routing and
history, the age of particular files, and the formulae and links
in Excel spreadsheets.
There are several "best practices" protocols under discussion to
maintain the integrity and tracking of native files and it won't
be long until native file production is routine, so litigators
and companies who have lagged in this area must get up to
speed quickly.
Thankfully, advanced ASP services make this simple: no CDs, tapes
or paper, just secure, 24-hour connections to native files and
full-text search.
invenio Product Brief
