Legal Updates

Picture this: Your team has completed the first level and quality control reviews. Your documents have been produced, your privilege log is out the door and you have just received the incoming document production from the opposing party. Now you have a universe of documents with the potential to be used as deposition exhibits, in expert reports, and as trial exhibits. It would be nice if there was a way to take advantage of your previous work identifying hot documents during first level and quality control reviews by using them to identify documents with similar issues or themes in the opposing parties production. You and your team spent days, weeks, or even months reviewing documents for production. Leveraging this time (and costs) would be greatly appreciated by your client. But is that even possible? Yes it is! 

In traditional litigation, third party discovery subpoenas are routine and the authority of the parties or the courts to issue them is well recognized. In arbitration proceedings, however, whether you can issue such third party discovery subpoenas varies depending on the controlling law in your dispute. This article addresses the growing split in the federal circuits with respect to whether third party discovery subpoenas are allowed in arbitration proceedings.

Last year, in In re Broiler Chicken Antitrust Litigation, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois laid out a very detailed protocol for conducting TAR that can serve as a go-by for parties wishing to conduct TAR in their own litigation. If you are considering implementing TAR in your next review, you may want to take a look at this. 

This blog is part one of several regarding how to effectively and efficiently manage electronic discovery in large, complex litigation. It is in these types of matters that special attention to electronic discovery is crucial to the client’s overall success. We begin here with the earliest stages: data identification and preservation.  

Managing a document review that contains foreign language documents and utilizes foreign language reviewers comes with its own set of unique challenges. In this article I provide insight into my experience managing a foreign language review (while not speaking the foreign language) and lessons I learned along the way.

One effective way to limit the scope of discovery, reduce confusion and ensure consistent deliverables (thereby reducing costs) is to enter into an ESI agreement with opposing parties. This article will provide some guidelines for these ESI agreements, what they should include and how best to leverage them for your benefit.