Electronic Discovery Navigator

Agility Is Key as Email Archiving Evolves at JP Morgan

Agility Is Key as Email Archiving Evolves at JP Morgan

"Financial services and banking giant JP Morgan has had to be agile in dealing with its email archiving system. The company swapped out one system because it did not meet its requirements, saw its vendor acquired twice, and now is getting ready to move its archiving system from one email system to a new one. Such experiences can be common in the rapidly emerging but turbulent email archiving market.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. was founded in 1799 and is one of the nation's oldest financial services firms. The company has more than 200,000 employees, offices in about 100 counties, and $2.3 trillion in assets.

Because of the nature of its business, the corporation has been at the forefront of the email archiving. "Industry regulations require that we be able to monitor electronic communication among our regulated users, such as stockbrokers and private bankers, and their clients," says Lance Livingston, lead engineer at JP Morgan. The company has to be sure that brokers and traders are providing consistent information about stocks to customers or else it can be censured by regulators.

If the company did not closely monitor communications, it could face fines of as much as $10 million. Consequently, the financial services entity has been able to justify the $100,000 annual maintenance tag that comes with its email archiving system."

Interest Grows in Email Archiving Services

Interest Grows in Email Archiving Services

"Like other segments of the software market, there is movement in email archiving to offer archiving services as a replacement for or a companion to traditional archiving systems. These services are usually offered under the SaaS, or software-as-a-service, label. And there is growing interest in these archiving services among companies that are looking to relieve overburdened IT staff or those that are seeking more features and functionality than they can afford to buy with tight budgets for new technology systems.

"Small and medium-sized businesses are becoming more interested in email archiving services, and SaaS is a good option for them," says Michael Osterman, principal analyst with Osterman Research , which expects these services to account for about two thirds of total archiving market revenues of $1.5 billion in 2011, compared to about one third of a $609 million market in 2008."

What is Discovery Analytics?

What is Discovery Analytics?

"As EDD market spending is projected to exceed $40 Billion by 20111, there is increasing corporate pressure to lower costs while continuing to manage the risks involved in the discovery process. To address this imperative for greater efficiency, the electronic discovery market is undergoing a steady shift toward workflow automation and the application of more sophisticated software tools. With a diverse and cluttered vendor landscape offering a myriad of “solutions,” one of the most difficult challenges is the evaluation of technologies where diverse terminology and claimed capabilities create “apple and orange” comparisons among solution providers and their product offerings. Discovery Analytics is the latest category of software that law firms and corporations have begun to use to help alleviate the continually rising costs of document review.  Unfortunately, there is confusion about the definition of analytics and how the newest eDiscovery technologies incorporate different types of analytic capabilities into their systems. This white paper explores the various structures and implementations of Discovery Analytics as it pertains to document review, as well as the many definitions to help purchasers make educated decisions regarding the solution that best fits their needs."

Preventing e-Discovery Headaches

Preventing e-Discovery Headaches

"The rapid growth of electronically stored information (ESI) has greatly altered the litigation landscape. In December 2006 the U.S. Judicial Conference responded to the changing times by amending the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, codifying the rules surrounding electronic discovery in federal court, but also creating new burdens for both plaintiffs and defense counsel.

To help ease some of these burdens, the federal rules require a meet-and-confer conference, under rule 26(f). Under the amended rules, a responding party must generally discuss preserving and producing ESI no later than 90 to 120 days following service of the complaint. At that time the responding party must identify all sources of ESI--including backup tapes, cell phones, laptops, BlackBerries, instant-messaging systems, and home computers--in connection with its disclosures, as well as identify what categories of information it need not produce because of undue burden or cost."

Metadata Grows in Legal Import

Metadata Grows in Legal Import

"A very small thing called "metadata" is getting bigger, at least in legal significance.

Attorneys said that lawsuits demanding the production of metadata -- the digital DNA of a document that can prove who created it, when and who may have altered it over time -- have increased in recent years. And courts are honoring many of those requests when they are made early on, and relevance is shown.

Most recently, a federal judge in New York ruled that companies need to be ready to produce metadata in litigation, holding that metadata associated with e-mails and electronic files must be preserved, maintained and produced in the course of legal discovery, particularly when sought early.

The case was a class action alleging unlawful searches and seizures of immigrants' homes, in which a discovery dispute arose regarding the production of metadata. Aguilar v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Div., 2008 WL 5062700 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 21, 2008). "

Prepare for E-Discovery Before a Lawsuit Is Filed

Prepare for E-Discovery Before a Lawsuit Is Filed

"The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require producing not just paper, but all electronic documents and data for trial. Defendants and their counsel must preserve and provide electronically stored information, and a court can inflict sanctions if it finds that relevant electronic documents have not been preserved and produced in discovery.

The records management life cycle is the foundation of an effective e-discovery program. In the traditional management model, every paper or electronic document goes through five steps: creation by the individual; distribution to intended recipients; storage of the physical or electronic document; retention of the document based on an assessment of its significance and value; and preservation in a manner that allows the document to be retrieved and searched."

Being Right and Still Losing

Being Right and Still Losing

"The paradigm that has emerged in e-discovery cases involving spoliation claims is that success regarding the spoliation claim will lead not just to imposition of monetary sanctions on the offending party but also to "adverse inference" instructions that will result in the offending party losing on the merits.

The "poster children" cases for this model were Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, 229 F.R.D. 422 (S.D.N.Y. 2004), "a relatively routine employment discrimination dispute" (in the words of the Zubulake court) which led to a $29.5 million judgment, and Coleman Holdings, Inc. v. Morgan Stanley, 2005 WL 67071 (Fla. Cir. Ct. March 1, 2005), rev'd on other grounds, 955 So. 2d 1124 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 4th Dist., 2007), which led to a $1.5 billion (with a "B") judgment. "

Federal court hits Bush White House over e-mail

Federal court hits Bush White House over e-mail

"A federal court tore into the Bush White House on Thursday over the issue of millions of apparently missing e-mails, saying the administration failed in its obligation to safeguard all electronic messages.

In a four-page opinion, Magistrate Judge John Facciola said the White House is ignoring the court's instructions to search a full range of locations for all electronic messages that may be missing.

The Executive Office of the President, the magistrate said, is limiting its search to offices subject to the requirements of the Federal Records Act, while sidestepping offices subject to the preservation requirements of the Presidential Records Act.

There is a profound societal interest as well as a legal obligation to preserve all records and "the importance of preserving the e-mails cannot be exaggerated," Facciola wrote."

Rule 34: A Cause for Confusion

Rule 34: A Cause for Confusion

"The 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provided some clarity with respect to electronically stored information. However, Rule 34 remains muddled. Courts and commentators have proffered differing interpretations, leaving litigators to struggle with two questions: 1) Does Rule 34 itself, without more, require the production of metadata? 2) Does a requesting party have to specifically request metadata before a responding party can be compelled to produce it?

In 2005, the District of Kansas in Williams v. Sprint/United Management Co. ("Williams I"), 230 F.R.D. 640, 646-57 (D. Kan. 2005) relied on the 2005 Sedona Principles to conclude that there was "a general presumption against the production of metadata," but was careful to note the exception that metadata should be produced when the producing party is aware -- or should be reasonably aware -- that it is relevant to the dispute."

More thoughts on 2009

More thoughts on 2009

"Firstly, e-discovery. It's already massive in the States, thanks to the ammendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) which broadened the type of documents subject to legal discovery to include all electronically-stored information (ESI). UK companies operating in the States are also beholden to these new rules, which stipulate that word processing documents, e-mails, voice mail and instant messages, blogs, backup tapes and database files are now all subject to legal discovery laws.

Vendors like Autonomy are certainly cashing-in on the projected increase in demand for tools that help to archive and retrieve electronically-stored information. The search giant bought archiving vendor Zantaz and data capture and records management firm Meridio to make it one of the best placed to offer its customers holistic e-discovery solutions. Proactive information risk management will become increasingly front-of-mind for chief executives, especially after a few high profile court cases."