E-Discovery Best Practices

  • Social Network
    Technology Advantage

    Collection Best Practices - How Multifaceted Software Has Changed E-Discovery

    As our work force has shifted to mobile and remote working practices (a trend in place before COVID, which only accelerated during the pandemic), businesses have turned to collaborative messaging tools such as Slack and various versions of Teams to manage communications. On the positive side, by using these messaging tools, organizations are able to more efficiently discuss ideas and brainstorm solutions. However, when an organization becomes involved in a dispute and those communications are potentially relevant to the dispute and need to be preserved and collected, the process may not be as straightforward as a simple email collection.

  • Checklist
    Technology Advantage

    Electronic Production Checklist

    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!

  • Justice
    Legal Updates

    Court Orders Spoliation Sanctions Requiring Defendants and Former Defense Counsel To Pay Attorneys’ Fees and Costs

    In DR Distributors LLC v. 21 Century Smoking, Inc, v. CB Distributors, Inc. and Carlos Bengos, 2021 WL 185082, No. 12 CV 50324 (1/19/2021), Judge Johnston of the Northern District of Illinois, granted Plaintiff’s motion for sanctions against Defendants and their former counsel, requiring them to, among other things, pay what was expected to exceed a million dollars of attorneys’ fees and costs to Plaintiff. The Court imposed the sanctions based on its conclusion that Defendants and their former counsel: did not take reasonable steps to preserve ESI (electronically stored information); did not conduct a reasonable investigation of their ESI; did not timely disclose ESI under 26(g); and spoliated thousands of emails and chat messages. This ruling shows that we, as legal practitioners, need to be extremely congizant of our discovery obligations.

  • COVID
    Technology Advantage

    COVID-19 and E-Discovery- How Things Are Changing

    COVID-19 has changed the world we live in. People are working from home, students are attending classes online, and all group events are handled remotely. For those of us who work in the E-Discovery field things have changed also. While we are facing new challenges, we are also finding interesting new opportunities to conduct our work more efficiently, and everything we are learning will inform our work even after the pandemic is over. 

  • Social Media
    Legal Updates

    Navigating Social Media Retention and Collection During E-Discovery

    Companies and organizations use social media ("SoMe") to gain market advantage, shape and model their own image, market and advertise to customers, track how effective their marketing campaigns might be, understand who their customers are, test new products or services and provide a platform through which customers can provide feedback. Every post or piece of analytics could be considered a “business record,” subjecting it to discovery in both civil and criminal litigation, internal and government investigations or audits. As a result, attorneys and their IT teams should understand the best practices for preserving, processing, reviewing, and producing data from SoMe sites to acquire valuable – and usable – evidence.

  • Attorney Client Privilege
    Legal Updates

    The Attorney Client Privilege: The Corporate Communication Conundrum – PART ONE

    “But in-house counsel was copied on the email, isn’t that enough?”

    When a business faces the prospect of producing documents in litigation, determining which documents are protected by the attorney-client privilege and preventing those documents from inadvertent disclosure is of paramount importance. Such a disclosure can have serious consequences for both the attorney’s and the client’s interests, including a court finding the privilege has been waived. At the same time, if an attorney is overly restrictive or indiscriminately withholds documents, they risk losing credibility with opposing counsel and the court, which can make it more difficult to assert the privilege when necessary.