Electronic Discovery Navigator

E-Discovery Tips From the Bench

E-Discovery Tips From the Bench

"Judges say that if lawyers have business clients they expect to represent in court, it is important to understand the file formats clients use, the metadata, or hidden information in those files, how many PDAs, laptops and servers they own, and who is in charge of them. They should also know whom to contact to preserve digital records without interrupting business. Most importantly, judges say to make sure that clients have a policy regulating how digital records are kept and destroyed and that they make an effort to implement that policy."

10 things you should look for in an in-house eDiscovery solution

10 things you should look for in an in-house eDiscovery solution

"If you work for a mid- to large-size company — say, one with more than $500M in revenue — you probably are familiar with the problems of eDiscovery. Your enterprise may routinely face five or more litigation matters each year, and you have terabytes of unstructured information that you need to sort through in order to find relevant information and place it on litigation hold.

Worse, that unstructured information is growing dramatically: at a rate of up to 80 percent a year in many enterprises. Unmanaged and unplanned-for eDiscovery tasks increase both risk and headaches for legal, IT, and business unit organizations. Outsourcing eDiscovery to litigation services firms makes sense if you don’t have much data or rarely face litigation, but it doesn’t make good financial sense as your organization grows. That’s particularly true if you work in highly regulated and litigation prone industries such as banking, insurance, energy, or utilities."

Customers Cite E-Discovery Best Practices

Customers Cite E-Discovery Best Practices

"Last year's changes to the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) launched a mass focus on e-discovery, or the electronic management of organizational data for compliance and litigation readiness. And after more than a year of implementation, at least a few customers are finally ready to reflect on what they've done.

While many firms, particularly SMBs, continue to struggle with the FRCP mandate, the ones who've managed to institute policies and procedures for the speedy and accurate retrieval of electronic information have a lot to say about what works -- and what doesn't.

Following is a list of suggestions culled from the experience of users in the field who are far along in their e-discovery implementations.

Make email archiving a priority

When IT pros at Foxhollow Technologies Inc., a startup medical device supplier, looked to install email archiving three years ago, management forced the project to the back burner, despite a general lack of email control. "There were users who saved everything and had gigabytes -- or more -- of email messages,” noted Chuck Arconi, system administrator at the company. At the time, Foxhollow had about 600 employees, but its email system chewed up 400 Gbytes of storage."

Expert Panel Moderated by Autonomy ZANTAZ Delivers Best Practices to Prepare for Escalating Subprime Litigation

Expert Panel Moderated by Autonomy ZANTAZ Delivers Best Practices to Prepare for Escalating Subprime Litigation

"Perform an internal investigation and early case assessment. Get ahead of the curve by getting early insight into the facts of the case, which allows you to assess the risks and whether or not settlement makes sense. Interview employees at different level and perform early case assessment (ECA) on real-time data, applying advanced analytics to uncover relevant information across all electronically stored information (ESI). These steps will frame the factual information and provide a foundation for cooperation.

Be prepared to place relevant documents under legal hold. Once you anticipate regulatory action or litigation, you must have a complete preservation of all relevant electronically stored information for all identified custodians. This is an important part of the amended rules of civil procedure. Relevant information must be locked down in real-time and securely collected when needed, and an organization must provide documentation about its processes and chain-of-custody to validate and confirm the completeness and accuracy of preservation procedures and implementation. Legal hold technology that preserves relevant information in email archives and centralized servers is a starting point; however, don't overlook the need to preserve information on PDA's, laptops and desktops. With the increasing mobility of the workforce, a large percentage of that information never gets stored on the corporate network, leaving an organization vulnerable to FRCP infractions and resulting sanctions or fines. Instant messaging, video conferences and voice recordings of phone conversations between lenders and customers can't be ignored as well."

10 guidelines for setting retention policies

10 guidelines for setting retention policies

"As if you aren’t busy enough, you now play the role of protector of electronically stored information.

With new regulations and the recent changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, legal departments are turning to IT leadership to manage the retention, deletion, search and recovery of electronic information. For IT management in large companies, this means tracking billions of e-mail messages, database records and desktop files as they move across tens of thousands of servers and desktop computers."

Ohio Law Firm Sounds Alarm on Electronic Document Retention, Offers Guidelines to Help Companies Enhance Preparedness

Ohio Law Firm Sounds Alarm on Electronic Document Retention, Offers Guidelines to Help Companies Enhance Preparedness

"To address growing concern over legal challenges related to electronic documents, Harrington, Hoppe & Mitchell Ltd. today released a set of general guidelines designed to help companies prepare for the possibility of such challenges."

Here's the link to the guidelines.

The Strategic Use Of E-Discovery And High-Tech Experts In Complex Litigation, Regulatory And Compliance Matters

The Strategic Use Of E-Discovery And High-Tech Experts In Complex Litigation, Regulatory And Compliance Matters

"The increasingly complex global economy poses many challenges for corporate counsel. Not only are they confronted with a host of legal, regulatory and compliance concerns, but also with the need to effectively manage and control the associated costs and risks. With the advent of new technological enhancements that enable businesses to operate more efficiently comes the task of how best to control the costs of the burgeoning amount of electronically stored information that is continuously being produced. The amount of e-mail alone being created by a company is growing at a rate of 30 percent annually."

(Source: http://www.metrocorpcounsel.com/pdf/2008/January/24.pdf.)

Managing e-Discovery And Avoiding Sanctions Under The FRCP Amendments

Managing e-Discovery And Avoiding Sanctions Under The FRCP Amendments

"Since the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) went into effect in December 2006 (and even before), the number one change we have seen is the an increased level of uncertainty and the fear of what might happen if changes are not made to how companies respond to e-discovery. At best, companies can continue to satisfactorily respond to discovery, but with higher costs and unpredictable outcomes as the response process is treated as a discrete event, often resulting in unnecessary fire drills. At worst, the company subjects itself to undue leverage and sanctions because it didn't do the right thing and can't defend its practices."

(Source: http://www.metrocorpcounsel.com/pdf/2008/January/15.pdf.)

Different Forms of "Electronic Communication" & Their Impact on eDiscovery

Looking Beyond E-mail: Alternate Forms Of Communication And Their Impact On Electronic Discovery

By  Jerry F. Barbanel & Bruce W. Pixley, Aon Consulting

"When producing electronic discovery to turn over to the opposing party, it is imperative to be knowledgeable of the dangers of potentially missing relevant data during the standard forensic collection process. It is commonly believed that when a preservation order specifies "electronic communications," the order is referring to e-mail. However, there are a number of other forms of electronic communication that may exist on a custodian's computer that could possibly be overlooked."

eDiscovery: Does Your Enterprise Know Where Its Data Is?

eDiscovery: Does Your Enterprise Know Where Its Data Is?

By Karen A. Schuler, ONSITE 3

Ten years ago it was important for corporate IT directors and legal teams to understand the locations of information and records, but in today's marketplace it is now a necessity. Due to an ever growing body of guidelines and rules at both the state and federal levels, corporations must now identify, hold, manage and produce potentially relevant information and records more quickly than ever. Failure to do so can result in claims of spoliation and significant sanctions.

The complete article is here.