Outsourcing
March 26, 2013
By Doug Austin
During our recently concluded thought leader interview series, I had intended to line up at least one more interview – with Adam Losey, president and editor-in-chief of IT-Lex.org, a technology law not-for-profit educational and literary organization and an attorney at Foley & Lardner LLP. Adam also served as an adjunct professor at Columbia University, where he taught electronic discovery as part of Columbia's Information and Digital Resource Management Master's Program. Under the idea of “better late than never”, I was finally able to speak to Adam and get his thoughts on various eDiscovery topics. Enjoy! :-)
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March 25, 2013
By Doug Austin
During our recently concluded thought leader interview series, I had intended to line up at least one more interview – with Adam Losey, president and editor-in-chief of IT-Lex.org, a technology law not-for-profit educational and literary organization and an attorney at Foley & Lardner LLP. Adam also served as an adjunct professor at Columbia University, where he taught electronic discovery as part of Columbia's Information and Digital Resource Management Master's Program. Under the idea of “better late than never”, I was finally able to speak to Adam and get his thoughts on various eDiscovery topics. Enjoy! :-)
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March 21, 2013
By Doug Austin
Thirty months ago yesterday, eDiscovery Daily was launched. It’s hard to believe that it has been 2 1/2 years since our first three posts that debuted on our first day. 635 posts later, a lot has happened in the industry that we’ve covered. And, yes we’re still crazy after all these years for committing to a daily post each business day, but we still haven’t missed a business day yet. Twice a year, we like to take a look back at some of the important stories and topics during that time. So, here are just a few of the posts over the last six months you may have missed. Enjoy!
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February 25, 2013
By Doug Austin

Today’s thought leader is George Socha. A litigator for 16 years, George is President of Socha Consulting LLC, offering services as an electronic discovery expert witness, special master and advisor to corporations, law firms and their clients, and legal vertical market software and service providers in the areas of electronic discovery and automated litigation support. George has also been co-author of the leading survey on the electronic discovery market, The Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey; in 2011, he and Tom Gelbmann converted the Survey into Apersee, an online system for selecting eDiscovery providers and their offerings. In 2005, he and Tom Gelbmann launched the Electronic Discovery Reference Model project to establish standards within the eDiscovery industry – today, the EDRM model has become a standard in the industry for the eDiscovery life cycle and there are nine active projects with over 300 members from 81 participating organizations. George has a J.D. for Cornell Law School and a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
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February 19, 2013
By Doug Austin
We’ve mentioned Ralph Losey from Jackson Lewis several times on this blog, including last year’s thought leader interview at LegalTech New York and our interview with him again this year, which will be published on March 1. We’re discussing another interesting article from Losey, but this time it’s Adam Losey. His article 10 Tips for LegalTech Vendors, that appeared in Law Technology News has some interesting tips that all vendors (especially those exhibiting at trade shows) should bear in mind. Here are his tips, along with some of my comments.
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February 08, 2013
By Doug Austin
In Peerless Indus., Inc. v. Crimson AV, LLC, Illinois Magistrate Judge Susan E. Cox sanctioned the defendant for a “hands off approach” to discovery by relying on a vendor for conducting the discovery from a closely related non-party to the suit.
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November 06, 2012
By Doug Austin
When you’re Jackson Lewis and your firm’s national eDiscovery counsel is noted eDiscovery expert and founder of the new Electronic Discovery Best Practices (EDBP.com) (as well as previous thought leader interviewee on this blog) Ralph Losey, it would make sense that you would want to handle all of your litigation support work in house. Right? Wrong.
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November 05, 2012
By Doug Austin
In Carrillo v. Schneider Logistics, Inc., California Magistrate Judge David Bristow ordered the defendant to “retain, at its expense, an outside vendor, to be jointly selected by the parties, to collect electronically stored information and email correspondence”. The defendant was ordered to produce all surveillance videotapes responsive to plaintiffs' discovery requests and monetary sanctions were awarded for plaintiff’s attorney fees and costs incurred as a result of the defendant’s discovery violations.
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September 20, 2012
By Doug Austin
It’s hard to believe that it has been two years ago today since we launched the eDiscoveryDaily blog. Now that we’ve hit the “terrible twos”, is the blog going to start going off on rants about various eDiscovery topics, like Will McAvoy in The Newsroom? Maybe. Or maybe not. Wouldn’t that be fun! Here are some highlights from the past six months.
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August 30, 2012
By Doug Austin
One thing about being a daily blog is that the posts accumulate more quickly. As a result, I’m happy to announce that today is our 500th post on eDiscoveryDaily! In less than two years of existence! So, what have we covered over the first 499 posts?
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August 16, 2012
By Doug Austin
According to a recently released report from the American Bar Association (ABA), use of Internet-based electronic discovery tools and predictive coding has risen in 2012. The 2012 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report: Litigation and Courtroom Technology (Volume III) discusses the use of technology related to litigation, ranging from hardware used in the courtroom to technology related to eDiscovery and e-filing. It includes a trend report summarizing this year's notable results and highlighting changes from previous years.
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August 14, 2012
By Doug Austin
So, you’re facing litigation and you need help from an outside provider to “get your ducks in a row” to understand how much data you have, how many documents have hits on key terms and estimate the costs to process, review and produce the data so that you’re in the best position to negotiate appropriate terms at the Rule 26(f) conference (aka, meet and confer). But, how much does it cost to do all that? It shouldn’t be expensive. In fact, it could even be free.
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August 03, 2012
By Doug Austin
Here is yet another case of inadvertently disclosed privileged documents. In Blythe v. Bell, North Carolina Business Superior Court Judge James L. Gale denied a motion for an order compelling the return of privileged documents inadvertently disclosed by the defendants, ruling that privilege had been waived on those documents.
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July 26, 2012
By Doug Austin
Review attorneys are taking a beating these days. There’s so much attention being focused on technology assisted review, with the latest study noting the cost-effectiveness of technology assisted review (when compared to manual review) having just been released this month. There is also the very detailed and well known white paper study written by Maura Grossman and Gordon Cormack (Technology-Assisted Review in E-Discovery can be More Effective and More Efficient that Exhaustive Manual Review) which notes not only the cost-effectiveness of technology assisted review but also that it was actually more accurate.
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July 12, 2012
By Doug Austin
There was an article in Law Technology News last Friday (Survey Shows Surge in E-Discovery Work at Law Firms and Corporations, written by Monica Bay) that discussed the findings of a survey released by The Cowen Group, indicating that eDiscovery work in law firms and corporations is growing considerably. Eighty-eight law firm and corporate law department professionals responded to the survey.
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June 27, 2012
By Doug Austin
As noted in Law Technology News, eDiscovery vendor iConect hosted a free webinar last week entitled "Duty of Competency and E-Discovery", in which Joshua Gilliland, author of Bow Tie Law's Blog and founder of legal iPad app developer Majority Opinion, discussed ethics and eDiscovery with Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
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June 22, 2012
By Doug Austin
A survey was recently conducted by eDiscovery Solutions Group (eDSG) that of Global 250 General Counsel on various aspects of eDiscovery processes and concerns regarding eDiscovery. The results were summed up in a post in the blog, The eDiscovery Paradigm Shift, written by Charles Skamser. With a little over half (127 out of 250 organizations or 51%) responding, the post noted some interesting findings with regard to how organizations handle various eDiscovery tasks and their concerns regarding the process overall.
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June 04, 2012
By Doug Austin
Repeatedly referring to the defendant’s unreliability and untrustworthiness in discovery and “desire to suppress the truth,” Nebraska Magistrate Judge Cheryl R. Zwart found, in Peter Kiewit Sons’, Inc. v. Wall Street Equity Group, Inc., that the defendant avoided responding substantively to the plaintiff’s discovery requests through a pattern of destruction and misrepresentation and therefore monetary sanctions and an adverse jury instruction at trial were appropriate.
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May 29, 2012
By Doug Austin
In Ceglia v. Zuckerberg (the case where Paul Ceglia is suing claiming 84% ownership of Facebook due to an alleged agreement he had with Mark Zuckerberg back in 2003), New York Magistrate Judge Leslie G. Foschio ruled that an information technology expert’s inadvertent disclosure waived the attorney-client privilege where the plaintiff could not show that it (1) took reasonable steps to prevent the disclosure of the e-mail and (2) took reasonable steps to rectify the error once it discovered the disclosure.
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April 30, 2012
By Doug Austin
Special Master, that is. Last week, Fios sponsored a webcast entitled Special Masters & e-Discovery with Craig Ball, who, in addition to being a prolific contributor to continuing legal and professional education programs throughout the US (and previous thought leader interviewee on this blog) has served as court-appointed special master in 30 cases (including at least one case covered here). Not surprisingly, the webcast was very informative, reflecting Craig’s considerable experience and knowledge in having served in that role in so many cases. Here are a few highlights.
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April 23, 2012
By Doug Austin
While a number of attorneys have yet to still embrace and fully understand eDiscovery best practices, most at least understand that there are (since 2006) Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that address discovery of electronically stored information (ESI) and (for most, but not all) similar rules at the state level. More are learning to conduct an initial discovery conference (a.k.a., “meet and confer”) with opposing counsel to address eDiscovery requirements at the beginning of a case and more now not only understand the requirements to preserve potentially responsive data once it is clear that litigation is imminent but also how to conduct the review and production in a defensible manner. However, as noted in this Texas Lawyer article, How to Prepare for E-Discovery Supplementation Obligations (written by Ross Cunningham and published in Law Technology News), an attorney’s eDiscovery obligations are not necessarily over after production.
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April 13, 2012
By Doug Austin
One major problem that many organizations are facing these days in large-scale litigation is that the demand for project managers far exceeds the supply. Law firms find themselves moving talented -- but inexperienced -- professionals into project management positions. Electronic discovery experts, litigation paralegals, technically savvy litigation support professionals, and even attorneys are taking on project management responsibilities with little experience or training. Our Jane Gennarelli can help with that.
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