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Most in-house counsel know the types of inquiries that should trigger evidence preservation or collection protocols. Once there is reason to believe there will be litigation or investigation, the duty to preserve kicks in immediately. But what's next? IE Discovery's Stacy Jackson and Jennifer Scrafford provide 10 questions that in-house counsel should consider and have ready answers for to help make collection efficient and cost-effective.
TechLaw Solutions Inc. and Nexidia have partnered. The companies will incorporate Nexidia’s phonetic audio search into TechLaw Solution’s e-discovery services, to be able to integrate audio files in complex e-discovery requests. Details here.
E-discovery may be on a path toward its most searching scrutiny yet. In Disability Rights Council v. Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority, Judge John M. Facciola recommended "concept searching" -- the use of complex algorithms that use linguistic or statistical patterning -- for a tardy producer to wade through voluminous data quickly. But Facciola made no mention of whether concept searching tools should be subject to the FRE Rule 702 governing the admission of scientific or expert testimony.
The OrcaTec Information Retrieval Toolkit 2.1 features two new tools: e-mail threading and
search suggestions. The e-mail threading tool groups e-mails into threads, so that the fully quoted emails do not have to be read separately, and the automatic suggestion tool suggests search terms from the index, including
spelling variations. More info is available here.
IT security software provider Surety has released the results of the 2008 Email Security and Authentication Survey. The survey revealed significant concerns about email content security and the preservation of emails for litigation. Results include:
Daticon's invenio 6.3 has added new features to the e-discovery processing and document review platform, including components that allow case managers to organize review subsets by "family units" (such as an e-mail and its related attachments). Details here.
Kroll Ontrack Inc. unearthed data from a hard drive that fell from the wreckage of the space shuttle Columbia. Apparently, most of the data was already transferred to Earth while the Columbia was in orbit. But Kroll Ontrack was able to recover the remainder to complete an experiment published in Physical Review E.
Clearwell is sponsoring a webinar called "Achieving the Right Balance between In-House Technology and Outsourced E-Discovery Services." It will take place May 14, at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET., and will feature e-discovery experts George Socha and Dean Gonsowski. For more information or to register, click here.
IE Discovery Inc., which provides discovery management software and services, has upgraded its InfoDox platform. Users can now review potential duplicate documents side-by-side. Press release here.
Catalyst Repository Systems has released CR 7.1. New features have been added to its Assigned Review Module, including a graphical workflow diagram. More info here.
E-Discovery: Defining Documents -- Bye Bye Bates
One of the most challenging problems facing litigators is how to work with the massive volume of digital documents produced during discovery. In the past, each piece of paper was stamped with a "Bates" number -- to help manage exhibits. But with digital files, no "pages" and no "Bates" number! Now files may be anything from Excel spread sheets to Word files, to e-mail, to iPod downloads! What to do?
Listen as Monica Bay, editor-in-chief of Law Technology News talks with Tom O'Connor, director of the Legal Electronic Document Institute (and a long-time member of LTN's editorial advisory board) who says it's time to rethink how we process and review files. Hear about a simple step that controls costs, improves accuracy and could dramatically change the face of e-discovery.
Failures to preserve and produce electronically stored information occur when organizations rely on error-prone, manual electronic discovery processes. Clearly, a deeper understanding of how to evaluate e-discovery technology is sorely needed. DLA Piper partner Browning Marean examines the most important criteria for evaluating e-discovery software and services that will maximize cost savings, reduce risk, improve business efficiencies and adhere to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for you or your clients.
In the years I've been writing about forensic technology, I've shied away from reviews that dumped on products. If I couldn't say something nice, I tried to talk about something else. Heck, I generally steered clear of mentioning any product by name unless I liked it so much I could barely contain myself. There are few perfect software products, and just about any application is a buggy mess in its point-O release. Likewise, code bloat and ham-handed departure from the simple virtues that drew us to a product in the first place are common missteps.
But the problems seen in the latest 2.0 release of the venerable AccessData Corp. product, Forensic Tool Kit (FTK 2.0), just seem deeper and wider than I've run into elsewhere, and I'd be doing you a disservice, dear reader, if I glossed over them. Read on to get a smattering of why I say "Wait! Spare yourself the pain!" when it comes to the FTK "upgrade."
CTSummation will be holding a webinar demonstration of Discovery Cracker 5.1. It will take place May 15, at 10 AM PDT. It will take attendees through an EDD processing project. Registration and info here.
Alonso Consulting and Training will be holding a CTSummation Litigation Support Boot Camp, May 20-22, in Orlando, Florida. (Not planning on being in the area? There are also upcoming June camps in North Carolina and Washington, D.C.) It counts toward CLE. More info and registration here.
Law firm Howrey, which specializes in antitrust, intellectual property and complex commercial litigation and trial practice, has partnered with Guidance Software. Guidance will provide its EnCase eDiscovery software to Howrey clients. Go here for details.
Boies, Schiller & Flexner partner Adam R. Shaw discusses three recent decisions issued by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York: a decision by Magistrate Judge Randolph F. Treece evaluating who pays for the production of electronically stored information; a decision by District Judge Gary L. Sharpe addressing the procedures for considering alternate grounds for affirmance on a motion for reconsideration; and a decision by Senior District Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. analyzing when the amount of attorney fees can be counted toward jurisdictional thresholds.
Cross-border discovery is a subject on which the U.S. and much of the rest of the world do not see eye to eye. Although litigants may obtain discovery from foreign parties in a U.S. court, explain Lovell's partners Marc J. Gottridge and Thomas Rouhette, a number of countries have enacted "blocking" statutes forbidding their nationals from cooperating with American discovery requests or orders.
Attenex Corp. and StoredIQ have partnered to provide enterprise customers with a combined offering of their products. Attenex Corp. sells e-discovery processing, analysis and review software, and StoredIQ sells software that helps users identify, collect and preserve e-mail and user files. The alliance enables the companies to offer e-discovery software from identification through legal review. Press release here.
Under the FRCP, parties may not have to search "inaccessible," or "not reasonably accessible" data to respond to discovery requests. To support the inaccessiblity of data, lawyers often rely on the fact that data resides on backup tapes solely designed to recover from natural disasters; or that the data recover is unduly costly and a potentially unfair burden to bear based on the information requested. Indeed, sequestering a haystack to look for a needle may indeed be unreasonable; unless of course you have a metal detector.
Continue reading "Moving data from inaccessible to accessible" »
At EDD Update, we link fairly regularly to vendor resources--websites, podcasts, webinars, white papers. There are tons of these, and many are very useful. But just a few years ago, a vendor website as a source of information might have been regarded with suspicion, if not dismissed outright. Wouldn’t it just be self-promotion?
Yes, of course. There’s self-promotion to a large extent. But these sites can’t--and shouldn’t--be dismissed out of hand. Given the hundreds of EDD companies out there, some companies have been looking for a way to be heard above the internet white noise--and providing valuable information to potential customers is one such way. The result? The customer wins.
Fios Inc. is presenting a webcast: "Complex Litigation, Complex Data, Collaborative e-Discovery" will take place Wednesday, May 07, at 10:00 AM Pacific / 1:00 PM Eastern. It will last one hour and feature Laura Webster (Program Management Analyst at Fios) and Mary Mack (Corporate Technology Counsel at Fios). Details here.
Other upcoming webcasts include:
A complete list of upcoming webcasts and details can be found here.
Richard Best, a California EDD Referee, offers his observations about the pending California EDD Rules:
At this point, legislation enacting e-discovery rules in California appears to be a political certainty and will likely have no opposition.
The comments on the proposal submitted to the AOC [Administrative Office of the Courts] and the response by its staff provide some insight to the understanding and intent of the advocates of the legislation.
At the Judicial Council meeting on April 25th, questions asked by a few members and responses of the proponents raised additional issues. The proposal and a spreadsheet summarizing all the comments and the committee's responses covers 147 pages and was posted on April 18, 2008. The spreadsheet, the agenda and the audiocast of the Judicial Council presentation and discussion may be found here.
The e-discovery portal DiscoveryResources.org, which is operated by the e-discovery management company Fios, will be relaunched tomorrow with a number of updates and improvements. Mark Mack, corporate technology counsel at Fios and author of the e-discovery blog Sound Evidence, says that changes to the site will include:
The goal of the redesign, Mack says, is to make the site easier and more intuitive to navigate so that readers can more easily find relevant information.
Our Incisive colleagues in London have created a blog in the wake of Linklaters' decision to hike it's pay bands, and other UK firms resistance to following suit. New associates are now up to £66K.
Attenex is presenting a web seminar titled "Risky Business: Subprime Litigation and the Role of E-Discovery." Chris McClean of Forrester Reserach and David Weber of Navigant Consulting will talk. The question: "Are your legal, IT and compliance teams ready to weather the subprime lending fallout storm?"
The 60-minute seminar will take place on Tuesday, May 13, at 1 PM EDT/10 AM PDT. Go here for more information/to register.
Dying of curiosity about the 2008 AmLaw 100?
The full story goes up tonight on The American Lawyer's website, but you can get a sneak preview at 3 p.m. when editor-in-chief Aric Press presents a free webinar, "The Numbers and What's Behind Them."
Press will offer key insights and analysis about what factors have influenced this year's numbers. Which firms generated the most revenue? Which are the fastest growing? Which are losing ground? Which have the strongest partner-per-profit ratio.
"This Law Firm Golden Age has been fueled by increased demand and unrelenting annual rate hikes.” says Press. "Partners have reaped record profits, partly by hard work, and partly by pulling up the ladder behind them: The firms are making fewer new equity partners. With the economy turning sour it’s doubtful that the extraordinary run that the big firms have enjoyed can continue.”
The webinar went live at 3 pm today.
Update: The report is available now from ALM Research.
Campers:
I've been JUST a leetle distracted lately, putting the final touches on the upcoming, first-time ever Law Technology News Presents FutureTech at LegalTech West Coast.
We're calling it "The Trifecta" inside ALM, because it's the first time we've conceived an effort that includes a live presentation, podcasts, and an LTN report.
Here's the 411:
Continue reading "Sneak Preview: "FutureTech" at LegalTech LA" »
David Ferris, of Ferris Research, is running a poll about retention policies. Check it out here.
Our latest Law.com/LTN EDD Webinar, E-Discovery: Controlling Costs is now available. This one-hour webinar was sponsored by EED (Thanks!) and is free.
We had a blast taping this one; how could you not with such a fabulous group of speakers:
* Craig Ball, LTN's "Ball in Your Court" columnist and Austin-based trial lawyer/tech guru/ computer forensic examiner.
* Patrick Oot, director of E-Discovery and senior lit counsel at Verizon
• Rich Hauser, senior corp. counsel, office of the general counsel, Farmers Group, Inc.
• Browning Marean, partner, DLA Piper U.S.
Yours truly was the moderator.
Enjoy! And we love to get feedback! Let us know what we can improve and what you like: E-mail us at eddupdate@alm.com.
So what went on in the past week’s worth of electronic data discovery news?
EDD Update featured couple of whitepapers, a couple of webinars, some acquisitions and integrations... not a bad week, overall. Things are moving along in the EDD universe.
Sean Doherty contributed a link to this Legal Times article, “Discover New E-Worlds,” which I found very provocative. The article, by C.R. Ragan and Robert Copple, addresses the problem that European lawyers are getting a little irritated at American inefficiency when it comes to arbitration.
Ragan and Copple are members of The International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution, where they are both members of the panels of neutrals and serve on the e-discovery committee. Ragan is partner in California’s Redgrave Daley Ragan & Wagner; Robert F. Copple is a partner in Copple & Associates in Arizona.
E-discovery is now, according to Ragan and Copple, “firmly established” as part of the American litigation process -- for better or for worse: Ragan and Copple write that “Discovery costs have long been a bane of U.S. litigation.” The costs have been enough to drive more than a few parties to settle out of court.
Just Released! Arkfeld's Best Practices Guide for ESI Pretrial Discovery-Strategy and Tactics (2008-2009)
This Guide contains strategy and tactics for handling sixteen specific ESI issues throughout pretrial discovery. Whether it is a "meet and confer" or request for production these are the critical issues to focus in requesting or producing ESI. It provides you with a valuable strategy and checklist for, and guidance on, the legal and technology issues affecting your pretrial e-discovery decisions.
EED Inc. is offering a Sedona Conference whitepaper, titled "Best Practices for the Selection of Electronic Discovery Vendors: Navigating the Vendor Proposal Process." Go here to get it.
Friday, April 25, at 3:00 PM (ET), The Sedona Conference's "Voices From the Desert"
webinar series will feature a discussion on Non-Party Production and
Rule 45 Subpoenas. Go here for more details.
E-discovery is firmly established in litigation, but what has begun to send shock waves through legal communities is how electronic information will be treated in domestic and international arbitration. In recent years, arbitration has received criticism for being as costly and time-consuming as litigation. Fortunately, write attorneys C.R. Ragan and Robert F. Copple, some emerging solutions for e-discovery can help preserve arbitration's benefits.
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In this new monthly podcast, editor-in-chief of Law Technology News Monica Bay interviews key experts of the legal technology community on top issues confronting the legal profession.
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