In eDiscovery, look before you leap! You have filed a lawsuit and you are set for a “meet & greet” conference with opposing counsel(s) to review and agree on discovery. What should you expect from opposing counsel and their client(s)? The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, of course, provide structure […]

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 […]

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 […]

How do you obtain information in a lawsuit in 2014? The practice of EDiscovery involves “electronically stored information” (ESI). Ultimately, whether the data comes in an image of the document or raw data, it will be reduced to a coalescent image such as a PDF, a TIFF, or as a […]

As we have previously discussed, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provide specific rules for the handling and discovery of electronically stored information (ESI). In Florida, the Rules of Civil Procedure were recently amended to include at least some guidance relating to ESI and e-discovery. Those amendments impacted different rules: […]

When might a legal case involve extensive discovery, including electronic discovery (e-discovery)? Suppose you sue a corporation and want to obtain documents/data (Request to Produce), information from the corporation itself (Interrogatories) and information from employees of the corporation (depositions). What might the subject matter of the lawsuit involve: Breach of […]