Umbrella Rulings Can't Cover All Data

When is enough preservation too much? Many legal professionals cringed when Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, held that the duty to preserve required the activation of a logging function to enable the retention of serve log data in random access memory, where the information that would be captured by that step was predictably at the heart of a highly contested copyright infringement case. See Columbia Pictures Industries v. Justin Bunnell, Case No. CV 06-1093 FMC(JCx), 2007 U.S. Dist. Lexis 46364 (May 29, 2007).

Critics charge that the decision misconstrues the intent of the 2006 electronic data discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and presages an unwarranted expansion of data preservation requirements.

How the IT department can prep for the courtroom

The mountains of electronic data generated within today’s enterprises are colliding with ever more aggressive legal discovery practices, creating formidable IT challenges during litigation - how to best provide secure and auditable access to sensitive corporate data that must otherwise remain inaccessible to both outsiders and most insiders. More importantly, how can control be maintained without exposing more corporate data than necessary?

These decisions are best shared between the network or IT manager, corporate counsel and a litigation support specialist, who will help identify and specify the appropriate data. But it’s the IT manager’s job to ensure that data is treated gingerly; enterprises don’t spend millions on network security only to offer up the corporate jewels at the first lawsuit.

RenewData Launches Data Migration Service for e-Discovery

RenewData Launches Data Migration Service for e-Discovery: "The migration of legacy e-mails using ActiveVault conversion engine employs a legally defensible process and results in a unified archive to support e-discovery actions.

E-discovery services provider RenewData on May 21 announced the launch of a new data migration system that locates and consolidates old e-mail into a new searchable archive to create a centralized repository suitable for legal discovery.

Data Migration Services is designed to eliminate costs and risks associated with maintaining old e-mail on backup tapes or in a previous e-mail archiving system, marketing director Jake Frazier told eWEEK."

The Data Boom: Can Law Firms Profit?

Legal Technology - The Data Boom: Can Law Firms Profit?: "In the fall of 2005, a small Israeli technology startup came to San Francisco's Morrison & Foerster with a lawsuit -- and, soon enough, a problem.

The company had been mired in a contract dispute with one of its business partners, a huge American tech concern, and, unable to reach a settlement, was taking the matter to court.

The stakes weren't particularly high -- just a few million dollars. But after the case was filed, the defendant hit back with an electronic discovery request -- every relevant e-mail, Microsoft Word file, spreadsheet, you name it -- so onerous that its cost alone would take a fair chunk of any judgment.

'We saw that it was going to take several hundred thousand dollars to do this,' says Oz Benamram, director of knowledge management and Israel practice counsel at MoFo. In fact, there was nothing terribly unique about this situation. As more correspondence and information is stored electronically, e-discovery is requiring more time, and more dollars, than ever before."

Storage Tip: The authenticity of a found document

storage.itworld.com - Storage Tip: The authenticity of a found document: "What seems to be the problem? Your IT organization has put in place proper procedures for deleting electronic documents, including e-mails. So it is no surprise when as a result of litigation your e-discovery process cannot turn up a particular document. However, to everyone's surprise the document turns up on your CEO's laptop. This is a very possible scenario. You must know whether the document is admissible as evidence in a civil lawsuit.

What do you need to know? Evidence is admitted in court only if it can be shown that the evidence is authentic. Authentic data must follow a chain-of-custody. So how does this work with a lost document that has now been found?

My expertise is storage, not litigation support, so I turned to AdamsGrayson Consulting, a dedicated e-discovery and data retention planning firm in Washington, D.C., as a resource. AdamsGrayson kindly provided me with the necessary information to answer the question. "