EDD Update

Legal Ethics is Especially Important in Hard Times

My blog this week finishes my interview on ethics called There Can Be No Justice Unless Lawyers Maintain High Ethical Standards. Ethics is not just Boy Scout stuff; it is the foundation of the whole legal system. It is important and I hope everyone will take the time to hear this out and read the blog. We all know that not every lawyer and e-discovery vendor is ethical, but most are. Don't let hard times tempt you to the dark side or you may end up all withered and boxed in like Darth Vader. 

When times are tough economically the lure of money makes it all too easy to be tempted to the dark side. Don't do it. These tough times will pass, but your reputation is forever. Don't take shortcuts and bend the rules. Don't take advantage of people. Above all, resist the temptation to churn and drag things out just to make a profit. Don't feed the flames of a dispute to make more money for yourself. Instead, figure out how to cooperate. I call it strategic cooperation and it comes out of a position of strength, not weakness. For more, see my article: There Can Be No Justice Unless Lawyers Maintain High Ethical Standards.

Judge Sotomayer - Technology Opinions

Could Judge Sotomayer be the first Justice to sit on the Supreme Court who has written technology related opinions before joining the court?  Since my last blog, I have been doing some research on Judge Sotomayer, the nominee for the Supreme Court.  I thought I would share with you some cases that may be of interest to those of us involved in eDiscovery. 

• In Specht v Netscape, she wrote a decision regarding the placement of a download button on a web page. All in all, she denied the defendant's motion to compel arbitration as it was believed that the Plaintiff was not a direct beneficiary under the agreement.
• In Storey v Cello, she wrote an opinion that an adverse outcome from an admiminstrative proceeding did not have preclusive effect on a suit brought under the  the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.
• In Mattel v. Barbie-club she rejected the argument that the federal court jurisdiction could be created in any federal district merely by providing written evidence of the domain registration with the trial court.

Although, these are not specific eDiscovery opinions, they are interesting as they give some insight into her technology savviness.

Historical Supreme Court Nomination

This is an important day in history as we, the people, may see our first female hispanic Supreme Court Justice appointed.  Today, President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayer to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.  Judge Sotomayer is an accomplished woman with degrees from both Princeton and Yale.  She comes from a humble background and was touted as still remembering her roots.  She has been accepted by both Democrats and Republicans as their nominee of choice in the past.  In 1992, she was appointed to the United States District Court for the Southern Discrict of New York by President Bush.  In 1997, she was appointed to the Second Circuit by President Clinton.  My hopes is that everyone will take the time to read more about her.  We all must read her  decisions and not just the ones noted in the news.  I am doing my research now on her opinions and hope to uncover ones that include her viewpoints on eDiscovery.  I will continue to post my findings and hope you will comment here with your personal findings.

Sedona Conference Webinar

The Sedona Conference will hold a webinar tomorrow, May 19 on new commentary from The Sedona Conference Working Group on Electronic Document Retention and Production. The panel, "Achieving Equality in the E-Discovery Process," will be moderated by Kenneth Withers, director of judicial education at The Sedona Conference. More information here.

Kazeon 4G for E-Discovery

When an e-discovery product reaches its 4th generation, customers should expect a mature product that addresses certain needs from a manufacture with some staying power in the EDD market. Kazeon’s eDiscovery Suite version 4 appears to live up those expectations -- with confidence.

Version 4 includes advancements in Kazeon’s modules for “Analysis & Review,” “Legal Hold,” and “Collection & Culling.” In addition, Kazeon has developed a new distributed and collaborative application: the eDiscovery Case Manager.

Case Manager is aimed at in-house counsel and litigation support staff. It helps administers legal matters from start to finish by distributing workloads to reviewers based on role-based assignments. The Analysis & Review module, which includes Kazeon’s dynamic concept search, now provides a chain-of-custody for search tools and some new visualization features that supply enhanced, in-place processing of data, e.g., drill-down charts and graphs. Kazeon also introduces new connectors for SharePoint and Lotus Domino.

Check out a video demonstration here.

Hobs Legal Docs Announces Partnership with Tricom

Hobs Legal Docs Ltd. has announced a strategic partnership with California’s Tricom Document Management Inc. an e-discovery outsourcing company, which specializes in data management, capturing, and processing services, including litigation coding, indexing, and legal process outsourcing. Hobs Legal Docs is a reprographics and technology company that provides services to law firms. Full release here.

Informative Graphics Forms Alliance with Trinity Technologies

Informative Graphics Corp. has joined forces with Massachusetts’ Trinity Technologies  to integrate IGC’s Brava! and Redact-It Enterprise products into Trinity’s Legal ISE content management and e-discovery software. Trinity Technologies configures, integrates, customizes, and implements content mangement systems for EMC Corp.’s  clients who use Documentum software.

Brava offers multi-format, Microsoft Corp. Windows-based viewing of documents and images from Word, Excel and .tiff, PDF, .xps, .dwf, and .csf.

Brava and Redact-It provide redaction by automatically removing sensitive content through user-defined controls. Full release here.

ExhibitView Releases ExhibitView 2.0

ExhibitView has released ExhibitView 2.0, a trial presentation software. It was designed by personal injury lawyer Robert Finnell, after he struggled with using existing software to create a media-rich settlement package for a  wrongful death case. The software helps users add video, audio, electronic documents, pictures and catalogues all evidence in one electronic library stored on a laptop, CD, or DVD.
It automatically recognizes when a laptop is connected to a projector and helps the jury see the evidence immediately.  The pre-annotation and search features help users find, preview, and present all of the support evidence that is tied together by personalized labels. The software is compatible with Microsoft Corp. Windows XP and Vista. Full release here. (PDF)

StoredIQ Launches Federated Master Appliance

StoredIQ Inc. has announced its new StoredIQ Federated Master Appliance, which it says provides search of multiple databases, classification, and management features and expands on StoredIQ’s litigation hold capability. Its centralized search helps users search, classify, and tag data across multiple programs as though it were in one program, and its federated litigation hold automates the collection and preservation of data from multiple locations. The software uses metadata to provide metrics and build reports. Full release here.

There can be no Justice without Truth

Electronic discovery is important to the justice system in America. It is important because in today's world of litigation, there cannot be enough of the truth to do justice without electronic discovery. As I explain in my blog this week on ethics, e-discovery is critical because writings are, and always have been, key evidence of the truth and almost all writings today are electronic. For the full story please see: e-Discovery Competence is a Fundamental Ethical Challenge Now Faced by the Legal Profession. The blog ends with a poll where you can express your opinion in an anonymous vote.

MessageSolution Releases SaaS Archiving System

MessageSolution Inc., an e-mail and file archiving system for e-discovery, litigation support, compliance, and storage management, has released a software-as-a-service version of their enterprise e-mail archive. The new version supports most major e-mail servers, including Microsoft Exchange Server, IBM Corp.’s Lotus Domino Server, and Novell Inc. GroupWise Server, and is designed to be installed on both Linux and Windows platforms. Full release here.

CaseCentral Announces Business Continuity Planning Protocol

CaseCentral has announced the availability of an e-discovery business continuity planning (BCP) protocol, which builds on CaseCentral’s e-discovery disaster recovery protocol. The BCP protocol ensures that core business processes are preserved and service to clients is maintained in case of disaster. Full release here.

eMag Solutions Upgrades eMag Vu

EMag Solutions has upgraded its eMag Vu hosted software. The upgrade includes reconstitution, which references the ability to put unique e-mail and user files back into a mailbox or ingest the records into an e-mail archive, document management, or legal review platform once they have been processed.
EMag’s new de-duplication technology imports all key e-mail metadata into the database so it can be de-duplicated without having to be re-ingested. The upgrade also adds enterprise scalable e-mail and ingestion technology. Full release here.

Lextranet Upgrades to 5.8

Merrill Corp. has upgraded its web-based Lextranet litigation case management system to 5.8. The upgrade adds video depositions to the central data repository where other discovery materials are stored. The video depositions can now be searched the same way as other case-related information. The upgrade also adds a text comparison function, which helps legal teams compare near-duplicate documents. Full release here.

Inference Data Adds Metrics

Inference Data has introduced Inference Metrics, a web-based software that helps users examine and analyze the progress of electronic discovery and litigation review.

Inference Metrics gives users tools to provide insight into review progress, user performance, issue analysis, and quality control. It provides summary graphs and detailed statistical analysis and the ability to share, save, update, and print reports. Reports can also be prepared for groups and teams, including litigation support, outside counsel, and corporate counsel. Full release here.

RocketMatter Adds Customizable Tags

Florida’s Rocket Matter has added searchable custom fields its namesake legal practice management/ time and billing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for small- to mid-sized firms. The tagging capability helps firms create custom keywords to describe a matter, contact, or document. Full release here.

TransPerfect Launches Case Interactive 8.0

TransPerfect Legal Solutions has launched TransPerfect Case Interactive 8.0, a web-based document review service which combines document storage, indexing, and web front-end technologies. It is fully Unicode compliant and has a PDF viewer that helps users review and redact PDF files in their browsers.

A universal document display helps users view more than 300 native file formats, and automatic metadata extraction helps users extract metadata from Microsoft Office documents and other popular file formats. Full release here.

CompuLaw Adds FTC Deadlines to Rule Offerings

CompuLaw has announced the addition of Federal Trade Commission deadlines to its collection of federal rules offerings. The FTC rules package allows users to select the appropriate rules for proceeding commenced both before 1/13/09 and after 1/13/09, which are based on amendments to the FTC Rules of Practice. Full release here.

Ipro Tech Upgrades to 2.0

Ipro Tech Inc. has announced that its eReview technology has been upgraded to 2.0. The upgrade adds increased review control and multi-language searching. EReview is a web-based document review tool that is integrated with eCapture, Ipro’s electronic processing software. EReview’s Tiff-on-the-fly feature helps users eliminate additional passes for redactions. Full release here.

Craig Ball Gave His First Keynote Speech This Week

Craig Ball just blogged below on the awards given at the “International Litigation Support Leaders Conference“ that took place in Washington D.C. this week. I had the honor of attending the same event and, of course, join in Craig's congratulations. But I also want to recognize the brilliant Key Note speech by Craig Ball that kicked off this event. His all-image PowerPoint represents the best standard possible for that software. His keynote demonstrated his creativity and mastery of all things e-discovery. It is hard to believe that this was his first keynote speech. It was very good as you would expect and I am sure there will be many more. 

I got to serve on three panels at this event, two with George Socha, one with Craig Ball and George, and the third with Mary Pat Poteet. To learn about the "Big Argument" that Craig and I got into on our panel on Information Management (which tended to spill over into the halls later as attendees can attest), you'll have to check out my blog this week, Part Two: Utah Court Mines Safe Harbor Rule 37(e) Into Oblivion.

EDRM Founder Honored

It was a great pleasure to give a standing ovation to George Socha as he was honored Thursday night at the International Litigation Support Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C.  George, who is surely well known to readers of this blog, co-founded the influential Electronic Discovery Reference Model project--whose colorful, ubiquitous horizonal flowchart is emblematic of electronc discovery. 

Along with the utterly delightful Mary Pat Poteet, Director of Litigation Support for DLA Piper, and Joanne Lane, Director of eDiscovery Strategy and Litigation Support at Metropolitan Life, George received the 2009 Betsy Reynolds Award for Excellence in Litigation Support. This excellent conference duly honors the memory of the late Betsy Reynolds with its superb choice of recipients for the namesake award!  Congratulations! 

Redwood Tree Chopper Chops Backup Tapes Too

Sanctions were denied for spoliation in a recent Qui Tam government fraud case against a company notorious for chopping down Redwood trees. U.S. v. Maxxam, Inc., 2009 WL 817264 (N.D.Cal. March 27, 2009). Turns out they also chopped up a whole room full of backup tapes, and deleted emails too, just before the law suit. The destruction of what later proved to be key evidence was, however, all in done in accord with their “general practice … to discard material that no longer had a business value.” Id. at *3. Since it was also done before a duty to preserve had triggered, the plaintiffs' motion for sanctions was denied. The plaintiffs then had to start a jury trial without the evidence and without the adverse inference jury instruction they had wanted. Interestingly, although the reasoning of Rule 37(e) FRCP was employed, there is no mention of the rule itself. 

Yo ho! Yo ho! A Swedish Life for Me!

Sunday mornings are my time to sip coffee and catch up with developments in the law and information technology.  As I wandered the Web this morning, I came across news of a battle afoot in Sweden over Internet service providers (ISPs) storing customer IP addresses.  It has a U.S. e-discovery slant, if you'll stay with me on this.

TREC 2008 Stresses Human Element in EDD

The Text Retrieval Conference Legal Track -- a proving ground to test search technology as applied to electronic data discovery -- completed a third year of research on search technology in litigation. In 2008, it explored a different aspect of the EDD problem: the role of humans.

Wake-Up Call on Slipshod Search Terms

Many lawyers think that keywords viable for a Google search should also suffice for the production of electronically stored information. In a recent ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Peck has sounded the alarm that such haphazard searches will no longer pass muster in the 2nd Circuit.