The Letter of the IT Law

Lawyers may have been the only ones paying attention, but it's been just over a year now since the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) amendments on e-discovery went into effect, necessitating that companies take appropriate steps to improve how they respond to e-discovery requests, which basically refers to the methods by which electronically stored information is exchanged during a litigation process. The numbers from a recent survey on corporate e-discovery by on-demand archiving provider Fortiva show a rising problem in managing this information, as well as a rising number of resources devoted to solving it.

E-discovery case law trends beginning to emerge | WTN

Erik Phelps doesn't particularly like being the bearer of bad news, but as a business attorney for Michael Best & Friedrich, he often sounds like the old commercial slogan: “You can pay me now or pay me later.”

And with the number of e-discovery cases picking up dramatically - a recent monthly Lexis Nexis report included nearly 25 e-discovery cases - the longer you wait to craft sound policies and processes, and effectively communicate them, the more you will eventually pay.

Businesses Generally Ignoring E-Discovery Rules

A year and 16 days after the institution of the revised Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on Dec. 1, 2006, about two-thirds of U.S. businesses remain unprepared to meet strict court requirements for the discovery and handling of electronic evidence, according to a data storage researcher.

U.S. Companies Lack E-Data Strategy

A year after the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure e-discovery overhaul, a pair of corporate studies has concluded that fewer than half of U.S. companies have a clear strategy for managing electronically stored information and only a fraction of information technology managers have addressed the issue."

Chief Execs in Firing Line Over E-disclosure

Companies are advised to have electronic data policies to manage the storage of information to aid e-discovery in case of disputes or court cases. Both the chief executives who bear responsibility for compliance and many legal departments who implement policies are not knowledgeable enough, according to a survey by e-discovery specialists Kroll Ontrak.

"Clearly in the UK, in-house counsel and their external counsel are lacking significantly in their training and understanding of rules and regulations regarding their electronic information," said Martin Carey, managing director of Kroll Ontrack in London. "They do not yet seem to be grasping the fact that all this data is no longer just information; rather it can now all be considered as evidence. This fact alone shows a severe lack of ownership and understanding."

Learning EDD From the Mistakes of Others

Keeping up with the subject of electronic discovery is a lot like following the latest developments in the lives of Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan: every week a new story and never good news. But just as we can live and learn vicariously through the missteps of the rich and famous, so can we learn from the facts through which the early years of electronic discovery jurisprudence is evolving. There have been hundreds of cases officially reported and/or discussed in the mainstream media since last December, when the amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure became effective, but the decisions discussed below are particularly illustrative of the most prevalent issues confronting the management, collection and production of electronically stored information (ESI).

Electronic Discovery in Europe: A Different Story

During the last decade, lawyers faced with the novelty of electronic discovery have reacted in different ways. Some lawyers have mastered it, some have become reasonably conversant with it and some have just added it to the list of things they know they don't know. However, there is an aspect of e-discovery that even the most experienced practitioners may not even know they don't know: the complexities of e-discovery in the international setting. This article gives a brief overview of issues that can arise in connection with international e-discovery, in particular those relating to data protection regimes, the technical requirements for processing data from other countries and other issues that may arise in the collection and review process.

Seagate Buys E-discovery Company

Storage vendor Seagate Technology said Thursday it plans to buy MetaLINCS, an e-discovery software firm. The vendor's move follows Iron Mountain's purchase earlier this year of Stratify, which is also focused on e-discovery.

MetaLINCS' technology will provide Seagate Services Group with an analytics engine complementary to its existing offerings for data archiving, recovery, and collection, the company said.

Seagate didn't disclose the deal's financial terms.

CIA Tape Destruction Offers Cautionary Tale for CIOs

The recent revelation that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two terrorist suspects may offer a timely reminder for CIOs at private companies in the U.S. tasked with electronic evidence preservation rules since last December.

The e-discovery rules -- amendments to U.S. courts' Federal Rules of Civil Procedure -- don't apply to the CIA. But the agency's decision to destroy videotapes showing harsh interrogation techniques may teach private companies how not to handle evidence, some e-discovery experts said.

The e-discovery rules require U.S. companies to keep electronic records when they're faced with a civil lawsuit or the likelihood of a lawsuit. In effect, what this means is that companies should archive e-mail and other electronic records, said Ralph Harvey, CEO of Forensic & Compliance Systems Ltd., an e-mail archiving vendor based in Dublin.

FRCP and E-discovery: One Year Later

This week marks the first anniversary of changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which mandates the speedy recovery of electronically stored information. In the intervening year, oodles of vendors have tweaked their archiving products to meet the requirements of the FRCP, adding search and rapid retrieval capability, as well as the ability to audit operations.

In the next year, Mary Mack, technology counsel for FIOS, expects that e-discovery will be bolstered by two events: the subprime mortgage crisis and the Qualcomm vs. Broadcom suit. She talks about the impact of these events here.

Autonomy Boost For E-discovery

Search giant Autonomy has launched a new document preservation tool, designed to help IT managers and legal teams in their e-discovery and compliance efforts on client devices.

Developed by the firm's Zantaz subsidiary, Desktop Legal Hold works by monitoring and locking down any relevant information including emails, PDFs and instant messages, across mobile devices such as laptops, USB devices and smartphones.

Houston Computer Forensics Firm Launches Partnership with Private Investigator to Uncover ‘Infidelity Secrets’ for Clients Facing Divorce

A Houston computer forensics firm has joined forces with noted private investigator Otis Owens to help desperate married clients find an answer to the painful question:

“Is my husband (or wife) having an affair?”

The new alliance between Owens and eDiscovery Forensics, Inc., “allows us to better service people who are going through the agony of a divorce,” says eDiscovery co-owner Gary Huestis. “We get to the truth by using the 21st century science of computer forensics – the recovery of deleted, damaged and otherwise hidden computer information,” says Huestis.

Measuring the Wealth of Backup Tapes

If wealth were measured in the content on backup tapes, few companies would know the extent of their riches until litigation ensued. With Index Engines' eDiscovery Platform, e-discovery providers and companies can know the wealth in tapes without going through the expense and labor of extracting the content from them.

Index Engines' Enterprise E-Discovery Platform strips data from tapes and archive files without the need to extract the data into its native format, indexes the raw data, and provides a Google-like search engine to find data relevant to a discovery request. This will save you time and labor in e-discovery and keep your tapes safe and secure in-house, without the need to send them to a third-party service provider.

One Year Later: Kroll Ontrack Reveals the Most Significant Electronic Discovery Cases under the New Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

As the one year anniversary of the amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) approaches, Kroll Ontrack®, the industry’s largest provider of electronic discovery and computer forensics services, today announced a breakdown of the reported electronic discovery opinions from 2007 as well as a list of the year’s top five most significant discovery cases. Focusing primarily on interpreting the new FRCP, common topics reoccurring in judicial opinions issued in 2007 included: the importance of early case conferences, the accessibility of electronically stored information, and what to do when parties fail to play by the new rules.

10 Critical Decisions for Successful E-discovery

Today’s explosion of electronic data, coupled with the December 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) concerning electronically stored information (ESI), requires information and legal professionals to expand their knowledge about handling electronic discovery.

There are many opinions about how ESI should be planned for, managed, organized, stored, and retrieved. Some of the available options are extremely costly in terms of their required financial and time commitments. Constantly changing technologies only add to the confusion. One area of confusion is the distinction between computer forensics and electronic discovery; there is a significant difference.

Keeping Up With EDD Blogs and Tools

As I wrote last month in the first half of this two-part column, no lawyer today can afford to ignore electronic data discovery. No matter the case, digital data is likely to be implicated. That means lawyers urgently need to understand EDD and keep abreast of developments in the field.

In last month's column, I looked at some of the more useful Web sites for learning about and keeping current with this essential area of practice. This month, I survey blogs about e-discovery and look at some vendor sites that include useful resources.