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  Should defendants be permitted to adopt a policy concerning employee use of personal computing devices in business that benefits the defendant and then hide behind that policy to its benefit in the discovery process of a lawsuit? An essential organization in the modern discovery process, The Sedona Conference, has […]

“But, your honor, we conducted a search and collection from all sources we deemed appropriate and where we believed responsive and relevant information was located…I mean, honest judge.” In effect that is the response form a party being questioned about the extent and sufficiency of their discovery collection efforts. Is […]

Who is to blame for a “document dump” – a “snow storm” – an obfuscation of information? Sometimes its intentional and sometimes it is not. Everyone – both plaintiff and defendant; both teams of lawyers. Requesters are imprecise and can be over reaching. Producers are often inflexible and unreasonable. What […]

I still remember typewriters. Heck, I still remember carbon paper, mimeographs and bag phones. Would a company, “back in the day”, have ever asked an employee, “hey, we need you to bring your own typewriter, desk, chair, or carbon paper” to work with you?  Of course, not. In the recent […]

The Sedona Conference has a slogan: “Moving the law forward in a reasoned and just way”. That slogan is exactly the way I have described this impressive organization and what do. The Sedona Conference regularly drafts and disseminates commentary articles on various areas of the law and the practice of litigation. I […]

The party receiving discovery requests in litigation has the job of trying to understand the locations of potentially responsive data and documents; determining the identity of key custodians; and determining the most efficient and cost effective method for collection. The requesting party has as complicated job. For discovery requests to […]

What is the “Daubert” standard supposed to test? Daubert v Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 US 579 (1993). Daubert and the Federal Rule of Evidence 702 are intended to allow the court to act as a gatekeeper in keeping “junk science” away from jurors. The theory, I suppose, is that jurors […]

Redaction can be a wonderful tool. It allows for the removal, or at least obscuring, of legitimately objectionable material within a document without excluding the entire document. Redaction tools might be one of the most abused, misused, and dangerous tools delivered to lawyers in sometime. Every corporate defendant in most […]

If you ask an opposing party about the details of their document collection; the custodians interviewed; the keywords searched; or the culling approaches used; you are likely to get one response, a quickly erected brick wall. In Cooperation and Litigation: Thoughts on the American Experience (2013), Richard Marcus writes: “I […]

Florida is sunny and a great place to live or work; but we can be a little slow to except new things. Florida Rules of Civil Procedure were amended a couple of years ago to include at least the mention of electronic discovery. Sadly, the changes did not treat ESI […]