Top Blawg Picks

• Over 1,000 Cases Now Included in K&L Gates' E-Discovery Case Database

  Electronic Discovery Law, 07/03/08

  We are pleased to announce that our searchable case database now contains over 1,000 e-discovery cases from state and federal jurisdictions, with new cases being added every week. Now more than ever, our database is an excellent source of information on developing e-discovery case law around the country.

• Remove Hidden Metadata from Word Documents

  TechnoEsq, 07/02/08

  Unfortunately, metadata has curtailed one of the courtesies attorneys in litigation formerly exhibited through providing discovery requests in an electronic format so that opposing counsel didn’t have to have his assistant re-type your requests when answering discovery.

• Is E-Mail Evidence Less Persuasive?

  EDD Update, 06/20/08

  I suppose it says something about your status in life if you are pleased or appalled to see Wall Street titans with eight-figure incomes taken away in handcuffs and booked. It's a bit like the lawyers in Qualcomm v Broadcom: we can identify with them until the lying starts, and then we no longer see ourselves in their moccasins.

• When E-Discovery Is Put to the Test

  EDD Update, 05/13/08

  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.

• ABA Litigation Section Reacts to the Qualcomm Case and Recommends e-Discovery Checklists

  e-Discovery Team, 05/04/08

  The Litigation Section of the American Bar Association has published an online article on Qualcomm v. Broadcom. Written by Kristine L. Roberts, Litigation News Associate Editor, the article is significant for its glimpse into the thinking of ABA leaders on electronic discovery abuses.

• Data Mining Employee Email Contacts

  Death by Email, 04/24/08

  When you think about it, your contact list contains a tremendous amount of useful business information. If you need to find somebody at a certain company, don't you check both your contact list and your incoming emails for likely people to know? What about doing this on an enterprise-wide scale? What if the company needed to find a contact at a large prospect?

• Court Sets Protocol for Production and Review of Text Messages

  Electronic Discovery Law, 03/31/08

  The court denied defendants' motion to quash subpoenas to SkyTel for the production of certain text messages. The court found that the plaintiff was entitled to pursue the production of certain text messages sent or received by specified officials or employees of the City of Detroit.

• The MacBook Air has no clothes

  Futurelawyer, 03/28/08

  The MacBook Air is just not having a good day. First, it gets hacked at a security convention; and, now, a high profile Apple reviewer pans it. The reviewer complains about the slow performance of the notebook, and the slow performance of Parallels.

• Dodging an EDD Sanction

  EDD Update, 03/25/08

  In Toussie v. County of Suffolk in the Eastern District of New York, a defendant dodged substantive sanctions for losing and/or destroying e-mails requested in discovery because the parties requesting the e-mails failed to marshal satisfactory evidence that the missing e-mails would have been supportive of their case.

• Inadequate Keyword Searches by Untrained Lawyers May, in Some Circumstances, be Sanctionable

  e-Discovery Team, 03/02/08

  A recent decision in Texas suggests that inadequate keyword searches could lay a predicate for spoliation sanctions when the defective searches cause evidence to be lost.

• Mac v. PC - Attorney Style

  TechnoEsq, 03/01/08

  The ABA Journal has a great article between friends of TechnoEsq, Ben Stevens author of The Mac Lawyer, and Rick Georges, author of FutureLawyer. Granted, even The FutureLawyer acknowledges it is a difficult fight given that even he hates Vista, but Rick does a good job of defending PC’s in a legal environment by sticking with Windows XP.

• Eight Legal Technology Trends for 2008

  LLRX, 02/27/08

  A funny thing happened on the way to finishing my annual article on legal technology trends this year. All of a sudden, the issue of an economic downturn and the use of the R-word (recession) became big news in the US and for plunging world stock markets. I ended up revising my trends list in light of recent economic news.

• Using PDF Packages Header Fields for Case Analysis

  Acrobat for Legal Professionals, 02/15/08

  Roughly defined, case analysis is the process of looking at the documents in your case and making decisions about them. In this article, I'll discuss ways in which you can code and capture your thinking about your case in a PDF Package.

• Is the E-Discovery Process Stagnated?

  EDD Update, 02/14/08

  Gunderson Dettmer CIO Eric Rosenberg evaluates whether efforts to streamline the analysis of ESI are effectively applied. Although methods of communication (BlackBerrys, instant messaging, etc.) have become more sophisticated, Rosenberg says the e-discovery process has stagnated.

• When and Why Should You Start an e-Discovery Team?

  e-Discovery Team, 02/10/08

  Should every organization have an e-discovery team? If a company has only a few computers, say less than 100, or rarely gets sued and has less than 3 lawsuits going at a time, then it does not need one. It is probably cheaper to just hire outside counsel and vendors to handle e-discovery cases when they occasionally arise. But for everyone else, especially in these times of cost-cutting budgets, it is a necessity..

• IT v. LT: A Critical Distinction Many Firms Fail to Make

  Ross Ipsa Loquitur, 01/28/08

  Recently on a state bar tech and practice management-focused listserve where I participate, an interesting question came up related to the key distinction between "IT" (Information Technology) services/guidance and "LT" (Legal Technology) direction. I think my answer to this question has broad applicability to many law practices, large and small, corporate, municipal and private, alike. So here's the question posed and my response. Hope you find the exchange useful.

• Europe's Data Protection Day

  Electronic Discovery and Evidence, 01/28/08

  DATA PROTECTION DAY - 28 JANUARY - An initiative of the Council of Europe with the support of the European Commission. "A 2003 Eurobarometer survey on the protection of privacy in the European Union showed that 70% of European citizens feel they know little about what is done in their country to protect their personal data. However, data protection issues are central in citizens’ lives: at work, in their relations with public authorities, in the health field, when they travel or surf the internet."

• ABA Releases Popular Book on e-Discovery

  e-Discovery Team, 01/27/08

  Last week the ABA released e-Discovery: Current Trends and Cases (2008), the first book to introduce this high-tech field to all readers, not just lawyers. The book discusses the issues and cases in an easy-to-read format that can also be used as a reference. In seven chapters and fifty-eight separate articles, the book introduces electronic discovery and explains the latest trends and cases, in what I think you will find is an interesting manner.

• Uniform E-Discovery Rules Recommended for States

  Electronic Discovery Law, 01/16/08

  The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws has approved its Uniform Rules Relating to the Discovery of Electronically Stored Information and recommended them for enactment in all the states.

• E-Discovery Predictions for 2008

  EDD Update, 01/10/08

  Craig Balls' Electronic Discovery predictions in the latest issue of Law Technology News made me think about the more general trends we might see in 2008. The most significant driver right now is, I think , the trend best exemplified by the recent Qualcomm decision. Sanctions against clients and attorneys (both corporate counsel and outside counsel) for not properly handling e-discovery are increasing in number and size. Based on that observation, here are my 5 predictions for the overall direction of the e-discovery space this year.

• Vendors Take Note!

  EDD Update, 01/05/08

  Allow me please to comment on an excellent article written by the New York Law Journal's Anthony Lin entitled "Sullivan & Cromwell Suit Against Vendor Highlights Problems With E-Discovery" http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1199441137204
  As many of my collegues, I occasionally find myself time quite enraged by the promises of certain EDD vendors that use all possible means known to man to land a project just to come up short in delivery.

• Security? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Security!

  Futurelawyer.com, 01/02/08

  Link: Excite News - Record Data Breaches in 2007, Groups Say. Privacy is dead,  and the more data that is stored electronically, the more likely it is that it will be stolen. This fact is a two-edged sword for attorneys.

• Just how far are you going with FRCP compliance?

  EDD Blog Online, 12/19/07

  Eweek just featured an article on compliance with new e-discovery requirements in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. I use the term "new" very loosely, as these rules have been in effect for over a year. The take-home message of the article, though, was that a majority of businesses are either unaware of, or are ignoring the rules.

• Court Rejects Attorney's Computer Illiteracy As Excuse For Non-Production

  e-Discovery Team, 12/08/07

  Plaintiff's counsel in a district court case in Colorado lacked the technical ability to open and read most of his client's emails. He figured that since he could not read them, he did not have to produce them. Instead of producing the thousands of emails contained on a DVD containing his client's college email, he just produced the ten he could read, and ignored the rest.