eDiscovery Navigator

Confusion Carries the Day in E-Discovery

Confusion Carries the Day in E-Discovery

"Lawyers and vendors look for ways to create common standards in e-discovery.

As the market for electronic discovery software and services continues to grow and mature, making sense of exactly what it is e-discovery vendors are selling is not always easy. "I've been hearing from providers for years, 'look, you don't understand e-discovery. We've got the ultimate solution -- those other guys you've talked to don't know what they're doing,'" says George Socha, an attorney and e-discovery consultant in St. Paul, Minnesota. "Well, they all can't be right. But there was and is no way to verify a lot of the claims vendors are making."

Lawyers trying to find out the cost to process electronic records for litigation often run into a confusing array of data and terminology that can obscure the issue. Everyday terms such as cull, image, document, and duplicate take on new meanings in e-discovery projects and legal processes like early case assessment, and production varies depending on the discovery query and the data set. And that's not even considering the variation in local rules in different jurisdictions."

Court Denied Subpoena Seeking Palin's Emails

US DISTRICT COURT DENIES SUBPOENA OF GOV PALIN’S EMAILS

"On March 17, 2010, the magistrate judge presiding over the criminal case pending against the alleged hacker, David Kernell, issued a detailed and thorough ruling denying Mr. Kernell’s request for broad subpoena requests to rummage through Sarah Palin’s email account. The judge, U.S. District Judge C. Clifford Shirley, Jr. denied David C. Kernell’s motion to subpoena all of Governor Palin’s emails. Instead, the judge looked closely at the governments allegation against David Kernell, and Kernell’s defenses, and determined that the subpoenas the defense lawyer proposed sought, with one exception, completely irrelevant information to any issue pending in the case. Mr. Kernell was indicted for unauthorized access and identity theft allegedly committed on September 16, 2008. (March 17, 2010 Court Order, p. 2)."

Here's the Court's Order.

Destroying electronic documents safely

Destroying electronic documents safely

"When it comes to removing a client file or billing record from a computer, simply tapping the delete key is not sufficient.

But several tech-savvy attorneys say that fact isn’t always common knowledge among lawyers.

“People want it to be easy and don’t always consider that they have peoples’ lives on these hard drives with a lot of sensitive information,” said West Bend attorney Clarence O. Behrend.

The sole practitioner has on at least one occasion come across some confidential client information on a computer discarded by a law firm.

Behrend cleaned the data off the machine. But in the wrong hands, it could have created a nightmare for the firm and its client.

The best case scenario is the potential for a breach of confidentiality, said attorney Ronald K. Phillips of Phillips Law SC in Cedarburg.

From a business perspective, if delicate information is disclosed, it can result in misappropriation of trade secrets, he noted."