From e-Discovery Team:
Robert Pirsig spent a good deal of time on his motorcycle in the 1970s contemplating the metaphysics of quality. In my own way, I’ve been on a similar quixotic mission for at least the past eight years — in search of “quality” in the e-discovery search space. This particular quest for the Holy Grail has involved seeking out the perfect search where one finds “just” highly relevant documents in response to a FRCP 34 document request, or, as a matter of early case assessment, “just” the hot documents one needs to win the case. I’ve searched the world over for answers, and along the way decided that I had been asking the wrong question.
At one time, I thought I knew what the problem was, and what the information retrieval “task” should be to overcome the problem. The problem, I thought, was simply the naïve use of keywords. Or at least, the way lawyers naively think about keywords when going about the task of searching for electronic evidence. I think many lawyers still practice with the assumption that using simple keywords, without more, to find responsive ESI is sufficient to get them through the day in dealing with their e-discovery obligations. While this remains a problem, it is not in my view the problem. And the task is not simply to try to “beat Boolean” with other search methods.
From the New York Law Journal: ”The costs associated with the discovery of electronically stored information continue to increase at unknown rates. While much of the discussion regarding costs centers on those associated with accessing, reviewing, and producing ESI, an oft-overlooked but (in many cases) significant driver of the high price of discovery are the [...]
From Ralph Losey’s E-Discovery Team: ”Last week I mentioned the mean streets of litigation and my guess that most judges do not know how bad it has become. Two federal judges in South Florida know: District Court Judge Patricia A. Seitz and Magistrate Judge John J. O’Sullivan. Leor Exploration & Production LLC v. Aguiar, 2010 WL 3782195 [...]
From Information Week: ”Many organizations are sitting on stockpiles of dangerous materials. No, we’re not talking about hazardous chemicals or unstable explosives. We mean backup tapes, which are routinely included in requests to produce electronically stored information (ESI) as part of potential or ongoing litigation.
The e-discovery realm is rife with cautionary tales of organizations tripped [...]
From Practical e-Discovery: ”Lawson v. Sun Microsystems, Inc., 2010 WL 503054 (S.D. Ind. February 8, 2010) - Lawson is an ediscovery decision that has flown under the radar of most bloggers and legal commentators. It is a relatively short opinion, addressing whether sanctions should be imposed on the plaintiff and his former attorneys after the plaintiff [...]
From Ralph Losey’s “e-Discovery Team” blog:
”Many courts have imposed monetary sanctions against outside counsel of record for their negligence in working with their clients to preserve evidence. See eg., Green v. McClendon, 2009 WL 2496275 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 13, 2009) (discussed before in Mathematical Formula for Justice Proves the Importance of ESI in Civil Litigation). But [...]
From ARS Technica:
”The Arizona state Supreme Court has ruled that the metadata attached to public records is itself public, and cannot be withheld in response to a public records request. Such a ruling on file metadata may not seem like a huge win for open government advocates, but it definitely is, given that metadata has [...]
