Document Production

“We are family.” If you are like many people, you can’t read those words without singing them. Unlike the joyous refrains of Sister Sledge, however, the idea of family may take on a more ominous tone when viewed in the context of familial corporate relationships and the obligation to preserve and/or produce electronically-stored documents or information in litigation. In today’s digital world, related corporate entities may share email servers or electronic databases or jointly engage agents to process or store their electronic data. The use of shared administrative or other departments may further cause the commingling of access to various corporate electronic data repositories. As technical advancements increase and further ease the flow of data between related companies, the question arises what discovery obligations a company may have to preserve or produce its affiliate’s electronic data in litigation to which the related entity is not a party.

Document management systems allow users to send a link to a document directly from the system, ensuring that all recipients receive the same, most up to date version, and, often most importantly when it comes to efficiency, ensuring that only one person is working in a draft document at a time. When we email links to these documents, the document itself is not attached to the email; rather, a hyperlink to the document where it is housed on the document management system is attached. As an e-discovery professional, my next thought is….how do we handle these links in discovery? At least one court has grappled with this question and its decision sheds new light on how we can handle hyperlinked attachments in our own cases.

Two recent decisions highlight the usefulness of phased e-discovery as a tool to satisfy Rule 26(b)(1)’s ever-important proportionality requirement. Model orders for patent cases in numerous courts require phased discovery, typically phasing email discovery to occur after other discovery and only if deemed necessary. However, phased discovery is becoming prevalent in other types of cases as well.

It’s a Friday afternoon and your weekend is about to start…and yes - you guessed it…a last minute production request comes in and your plans are no longer the same. Like many other e-discovery professionals, I’ve been in this position too many times to count. To ensure that I remember all of the various conditions that should be considered and checked and double-checked in preparing productions, I recommend using a checklist to make sure you are top of all of it!