What to do Without Local E-Discovery Rules
" How many e-mails do you send or receive a day? How many documents do you open on your desktop? How reliant are you on your BlackBerry or iPhone? Most of us take for granted being bombarded with e-mails and electronic correspondence.
The practice of law is changing as the paper trail gives way to the electronic trail.
The discovery provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended Dec. 1, 2006, to provide for electronically stored information. The amendments mandate the preservation, discoverability, production, accessibility and costs associated with ESI including e-mail, word processing documents, spreadsheets, voicemail and databases.
It’s now imperative that a lawyer be able to find every document -- paper or electronic -- relevant to the litigation. "Discovery of electronically stored data is essential because litigants would not find much of this information through traditional paper discovery processes," New Orleans attorney Corinne L. Giacobbe wrote in the Washington and Lee University Law Review."
