Ediscovery profoundly changing lawyering
"When the Internet was still in its infancy, say in the long-ago past of 2006, the rules governing evidence in most civil cases were limited largely to paper.
But that all changed officially Dec. 1, 2006, with the enactment of new federal standards requiring lawyers and their clients to handle e-mail, spread sheets and other electronic information just as they would the paper records that had formed the foundation of civil cases for decades.The enactment of those rules and some case law that developed a few years earlier has profoundly changed the litigation landscape.
A whole new universe of information - once out of reach to lawyers seeking to push their point in court - is now available in everything from commercial to matrimonial cases. Communications via BlackBerry, desktop e-mail, and voice mail now routinely are entered as evidence in civil cases.
Even E-ZPass records can be subpoenaed to establish a litigant's whereabouts."
