Featured Electronic Discovery Articles
ED101 - e-Discovery Fundamentals
Effective electronic discovery review requires careful planning and project team training in order to ensure timelines are met, critical evidence is not missed (or inadvertently produced), and that...
The detailed "content mapping" process has become a crucial component of discovery preparedness and can often mean the difference between obtaining a favorable scope of discovery or, on the negative...
A huge component of e-discovery relates to electronic files that are created and stored every day by employees' e-mails, word documents, spreadsheets, presentations and more.
Electronic discovery is filled with pitfalls and mistakes that can be avoided with proper planning and preparation. One area that can have the greatest impact on the defensibility and the cost of...
When it comes to electronic discovery document review, one discovers something surprising and a bit scandalous – the average document review contains a lot of bad review calls that can be extremely...
The goal for any e-discovery
project is to manage data
successfully throughout the
process and eliminate any surprises.
In the world of electronic discovery,
what does this mean?
Many people wonder:
What exactly are best
practices when it comes
to electronic discovery? This is
a question attorneys frequently
ask themselves and others
when trying to assess litigation...
A review of 100,000 potentially responsive documents was conducted in response to litigation. The legal team “successfully” reported that the review was 99.7% accurate when sampling the work product,...
First, the GC relied on old documentation to reduce the scope of discovery and ended up broadening it. Next, the GC negotiated common search terms across the entire enterprise rather than narrowing...
We are frequently asked about best practices in collecting electronically stored information (ESI) and how data collections should or should not be performed. While collections will certainly vary...
Electronic discovery projects are, by nature, chaotic. When dealing with electronically stored information (ESI) from dozens of custodians, a variety of vendors and service providers, hundreds of...
During an electronic document review, attorneys may come across an email message that is responsive to the document request. What if there is an attachment to the email, and the attachment is not...
To read some accounts, the
review of “native” files is the
Holy Grail in electronic discovery.
As the story goes, the ability
to review documents in their
original format will provide...
Advanced Electronic Discovery
There are four main electronic evidence processes in any electronic discovery project:
Restoration and Harvesting, Processing, Review, Production.
This article focuses on the restoration...
Ensuring records management practices reflect information governance policies—should such policies exist in the first place—can be a monumental challenge for any organization. Taking a disciplined...
You’ve done it. You’ve finally decided
that the discovery portion for the
matter you are managing is simply
too large for your little Concordance
database and the personnel assigned
to help get...
The absolute number one lesson is to plan. I would advocate that in nearly every project, e-discovery or otherwise, doubling (yes doubling) the planning effort for a project results in substantially...
The slow and relentless march to gain control over the information assets of a corporation, enabling users to more efficiently collaborate and share information, facilitating records management...
Baselining your e-discovery activities allows you to repeat the process as needed, writes CIO Update guest columnist Vikas Pall of Fios.
With the amendments to the Federal
Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), precedent-
setting adverse sanctions against
some of the largest corporations and
growing regulatory requirements, the
need to...
Investigations, windfall profits, rebates...the legislative and enforcement activity around energy companies is at its highest peak since the California energy crisis. In addition, new changes to the...
any battles have been fought over material inadvertently produced. One of the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, going into effect in December 2006, attempts to add structure and...
Culling large data sets by keyword is a common process in electronic discovery (ED) projects. Too often, however, this process does not receive the time or consideration it properly deserves.
When a Florida judge held that Morgan Stanley had not properly retained its emails and other electronic documents, the investment firm learned an expensive lesson.
Besides the three-martini lunch, voice mail has been the most personalized and candid form of communication in business. Like email, voice messages are often casual and off the cuff. The speaker...
Electronic evidence preservation and collection has been the bane of 21st century litigation. The failure of many corporations to account for their own information has compromised their litigation...
On September 20, 2005, the Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure sent the proposed electronic discovery amendments to the Federal Rules to the Supreme Court for its...
With the rapid growth of electronic discovery, even well-informed lawyers and support teams are often unclear about the differences between computer forensics and electronic discovery. The differing...
Emerging Trends
Online collaboration is a hot topic in 2009. The proliferation of free or inexpensive Internet collaboration tools, coupled with a down economy, has made many people hungry to learn more about ways...
The Editor of The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel interviews Mary Mack, Corporate Technology Counsel, Fios, Inc.
The Editor of The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel interviews Mary Mack, Corporate Technology Counsel, Fios Inc. about international issues around e-Discovery.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently investigating more than 100 companies for backdating improprieties. At the heart of these investigations are the executives and general counsel,...
The subprime mortgage crisis has evolved into a global financial crisis. All those affected — homeowners, regulators, politicians and investors — are clamoring for someone to blame. Investigations...
Ensuring records management practices reflect information governance policies—should such policies exist in the first place—can be a monumental challenge for any organization. Taking a disciplined...
The Editor interviews Mary Mack, Technology Counsel, Fios, Inc., who has been regularly blogging on e-discovery issues and the Qualcomm v. Broadcom case in her blog, SoundEvidence, on...
It appears that law and technology
are conspiring to make life difficult
for corporate counsel and IT
departments. Invariably, the stresses
of electronic discovery have been
exacerbated by the...
Last month, I outlined an approach for leveraging
the outputs of a counsel convergence exercise to
reduce costs and attain more management control
over the (electronic) discovery process.
Today, we use more than 400 law firms in the US. Like many companies, we are in the process of reducing the number of firms we use and being more thoughtful about how we can achieve efficiencies with...
e-Discovery Readiness & Planning
To preserve or not to preserve? That is no longer the question. Now that we have been working with the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governing the discovery of electronically...
Ensuring records management practices refl ect information
governance policies, should such policies exist in the first place, can be a monumental challenge for any organization. Taking a...
The detailed "content mapping" process has become a crucial component of discovery preparedness and can often mean the difference between obtaining a favorable scope of discovery or, on the negative...
Forrester's Barry Murphy conducts an executive podcast interview with Prashant Dubey, General Manager of Fios' Discovery Management Services Consulting group, to talk about e-discovery and the role...
Baselining your e-discovery activities allows you to repeat the process as needed, writes CIO Update guest columnist Vikas Pall of Fios.
First, the GC relied on old documentation to reduce the scope of discovery and ended up broadening it. Next, the GC negotiated common search terms across the entire enterprise rather than narrowing...
As the electronic world of evidence continues to explode from terabyte to petabyte, the need to understand where the data lives inside and outside the corporate fire- walls, how to retrieve that data...
Most executives and managers try to keep their
distance from the Chief Financial Officer
(CFO). However, as pressure to decrease
legal costs continues to
mount, GCs can benefit
from giving their...
When Judge Scheindlin ruled in a landmark
case and made the statement “that’s going
to be the most expensive curse word you
ever said,” little did she realize the prophetic nature of
her words.
Legal holds and preservation are hot topics at electronic discovery conferences these days. When faced with anticipated or pending litigation or government investigations, companies have an...
One of the most important issues in litigation is how to find and access the data when it is requested and ensure its admissibility in court.
Case Law / Rules
On September 19, 2008, Rule 502 of the Federal Rules of Evidence was signed into law. So what? Well, this is actually good news for many litigants, assuming that they understand the rule and are...
Can one political entity assert jurisdiction over a resident of another by virtue of electronic contact? Can a brief electronic message, such as a Facebook message, sufficiently apprise a defendant...
It was only six years ago that Sarbanes-Oxley was passed by Congress with the intent on restoring public confidence after corporate scandals affected companies like Enron. However in light of recent...
An ESI Content Map is a concise summary of an organization’s electronic data sources for use by parties who don’t need to know every minute detail about the IT infrastructure.
An ESI Content Map is a concise summary of an organization’s electronic data sources for use by parties who don’t need to know every minute detail about the IT infrastructure.
The Editor of Metropolitan Corporate Counsel interviews Brad Harris, Director, Discovery Center of Excellence, Fios, Inc. about the impact of the amendment to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
The Editor interviews Mary Mack, Technology Counsel, Fios, Inc., who has been regularly blogging on e-discovery issues and the Qualcomm v. Broadcom case in her blog, SoundEvidence, on...
The United States District Court for the Southern District of California's decision in Qualcomm v. Broadcom could require companies to reconsider their e-discovery policies and procedures.
Forrester's Barry Murphy conducts an executive podcast interview with Prashant Dubey, General Manager of Fios' Discovery Management Services Consulting group, to talk about e-discovery and the role...
The magical e-discovery
alarm clock known as
Dec. 1, 2006, meant to
wake people in the legal and
business worlds up has rung —
and it’s time to stop hitting the
snooze button and address...
In today’s litigious environment, both
law firms and corporations are under
mounting pressure to be much
more proactive and process oriented
when managing electronic discovery
requests. This...
On September 20, 2005, the Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure sent the proposed electronic discovery amendments to the Federal Rules to the Supreme Court for its...
e-Discovery Standards & Best Practices
The editor interviews Mary Mack, Corporate Technology Counsel, Fios, Inc., on the biggest cost drivers today when it comes to litigation and e-discovery.
Article on defensible legal holds for e-discovery by Brad Harris, Director of the Discovery Center of Excellence, Fios, Inc.
Interview with Brad Harris, Director, Discovery Center of Excellence, Fios Inc. and Barry Murphy, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research
You’ve done it. You’ve finally decided
that the discovery portion for the
matter you are managing is simply
too large for your little Concordance
database and the personnel assigned
to help get...
Many people wonder:
What exactly are best
practices when it comes
to electronic discovery? This is
a question attorneys frequently
ask themselves and others
when trying to assess litigation...