June 10, 2013
By Doug Austin
In April, we referenced Henry Kelston’s report in Law Technology News that another major set of amendments to the discovery provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is getting closer and could be adopted within the year. Now, the amendments are one step closer to enactment as they have been approved for public comment.
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June 07, 2013
By Doug Austin
In United States ex rel. Becker v. Tools & Metals, Inc., a qui tam False Claims Act litigation, the plaintiffs sought, and the court awarded, costs for, among other things, uploading ESI, creating a Relativity index, and processing data over the objection that expenses should be limited to “reasonable out-of-pocket expenses which are part of the costs normally charged to a fee-paying client.” The court also approved electronic hosting costs, rejecting a defendant’s claim that “reasonableness is determined based on the number of documents used in the litigation.” However, the court refused to award costs for project management and for extracting data from hard drives where the plaintiff could have used better means to conduct a “targeted extraction of information.”
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June 06, 2013
By Doug Austin
Negotiating search terms with opposing counsel has become commonplace to agree on the scope of discovery. However, when you negotiate terms with the other side, you could be agreeing to produce more than you think. Craig Ball’s latest article in Law Technology News discusses the issues and tries to answer the question: Are Keywords Just Filters?
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June 05, 2013
By Jane Gennarelli
As a litigation technology professional, you probably work on lots of different types of cases, for different practice groups within your firm. While you don’t need to know the law in each area of practice, it helps to have a basic understanding of the various types of cases that you work on. Here are descriptions of some different types of cases.
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June 04, 2013
By Doug Austin
Over the past few weeks, we have talked about the benefits and capabilities of Forensic Toolkit (FTK) Imager from AccessData (and obtaining your own free copy), how to create a disk image and how to add evidence items with FTK Imager for the purpose of reviewing the contents of evidence items, such as physical drives or images that you’ve created. This week, let’s discuss how to export files and how to create a custom content image of a targeted collection of files.
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June 03, 2013
By Doug Austin
While we may be “just a bit behind” Google in popularity (900 million visits per month), we’re proud to announce that yesterday eDiscoveryDaily reached the 200,000 visit milestone! It took us a little over 21 months to reach 100,000 visits and just over 11 months to get to 200,000 (don’t tell my boss, he’ll expect 300,000 in 5 1/2 months). When we reach key milestones, we like to take a look back at some of the recent stories we’ve covered, so here are some recent eDiscovery items of interest.
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May 31, 2013
By Doug Austin
Sharon Nelson wrote a terrific post about the “controversy” regarding the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Enron Data Set in her Ride the Lightning blog (Is the Enron E-Mail Data Set Worth All the Mudslinging?). I wanted to repeat some of her key points here and offer some of my own perspective directly from sitting in on the Data Set team during the EDRM Annual Meeting earlier this month.
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May 30, 2013
By Doug Austin
If you think discovery violations by the other side can cause you problems, imagine being this guy. As reported by WRAL.com in Durham, North Carolina, the defense in State of North Carolina v. Raven S. Abaroa filed a Motion to Dismiss the Case for Discovery Violations after the state produced a forensic image of a hard drive (in the middle of trial) that had been locked away in the Durham Police Department for eight years.
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May 29, 2013
By Jane Gennarelli
In the last couple of posts in this series we covered two different types of litigation – Class Action and Multi-District. Those litigation types are defined by how a case is structured – for example, in Class Action litigation there are a number of plaintiffs with a common grievance against the same defendant. There are also several different types of litigation that are defined by area of law. Before we get to that, however, let’s take a look at how law firms are structured, because most firms are structured around those same areas of law.
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May 28, 2013
By Doug Austin
Remember EORHB v. HOA Holdings, where, in a surprise ruling, both parties were instructed to use predictive coding by the judge? Well, the judge has changed his mind.
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May 24, 2013
By Doug Austin
With Anthony Weiner’s announcement that he is attempting a political comeback by running for mayor on New York City, it’s worth remembering the “Twittergate” story that ultimately cost his congressional seat in the first place – not to bash him, but to remind all of us how important it is to think before you hit send (even if he did start his campaign by using a picture of Pittsburgh's skyline instead of NYC's -- oops!). Here is another reminder of that fact.
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May 23, 2013
By Doug Austin
In Apple v. Samsung, California Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal granted Apple’s motion to compel third party Google to produce the search terms and custodians used to respond to discovery requests and ordered the parties to “meet and confer in person to discuss the lists and to attempt to resolve any remaining disputes regarding Google’s production.”
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May 22, 2013
By Jane Gennarelli
Last week’s blog post covered class action litigation – that is, a case that is filed on behalf of a group (or class) of members who have a common grievance or have suffered a common injury. One lawsuit is filed and there is one trial if the case goes that far. Another type of lawsuit that “consolidates” is multi-district litigation (usually referred to as MDL).
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May 21, 2013
By Doug Austin
Today is the start of LegalTech® West Coast 2013 (LTWC) and eDiscoveryDaily is here to report about the latest eDiscovery trends being discussed at the show. Today, we will provide a description of some of the sessions related to eDiscovery to give you a sense of the topics being covered. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, come check out the show – there are a number of sessions available and 62 exhibitors providing information on their products and services, including (shameless plug warning!) my company, CloudNine Discovery, which just announced yesterday that we will be previewing a brand new, browser-independent version of our linear review application, OnDemand®.
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May 20, 2013
By Doug Austin
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the benefits and capabilities of Forensic Toolkit (FTK) Imager, which is a computer forensics software application provided by AccessData, as well as how to download your own free copy. Then, last week, we discussed how to create a disk image. This week, let’s discuss how to add evidence items with FTK Imager for the purpose of reviewing the contents of evidence items, such as physical drives or images that you’ve created.
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May 17, 2013
By Doug Austin
In AtHome Care, Inc. v. The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, Idaho District Judge B. Lynn Winmill granted the plaintiff’s motion to compel documents, ordering the defendant to identify and produce metadata for the documents in this case.
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May 16, 2013
By Doug Austin
Last week, we reported from the Annual Meeting for the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) group and discussed some significant efforts and accomplishments by each of the project teams within EDRM. That included an update from the EDRM Data Set project, where an effort was underway to identify and remove personally-identifiable information (“PII”) data from the EDRM Data Set. Now, version 1 of the Data Set is completed and available for download.
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May 15, 2013
By Jane Gennarelli
In the last two posts in this series, I told you a bit about alternatives to litigation. And that followed discussion of the litigation process, through the post-trial appeals process. We’re not done yet, though. When I discuss the litigation process with law firm technology professionals, they often ask me about different types of litigation… for example, about class action litigation, or multidistrict litigation, or antitrust litigation, and so on. In the next few posts, I’m going to describe different types of litigation so these terms will be familiar to you.
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May 14, 2013
By Doug Austin
In Advanced Tactical Ordnance Systems, LLC v. Real Action Paintball, Inc., Indiana Magistrate Judge Roger B. Cosbey took the unusual step of allowing the plaintiff direct access to a defendant company’s database under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34 because the plaintiff made a specific showing that the information in the database was highly relevant to the plaintiff’s claims, the benefit of producing it substantially outweighed the burden of producing it, and there was no prejudice to the defendant.
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May 13, 2013
By Doug Austin
A few days ago, we talked about the benefits and capabilities of Forensic Toolkit (FTK), which is a computer forensics software application provided by AccessData, as well as how to download your own free copy. Now, let’s discuss how to create a disk image.
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May 10, 2013
By Doug Austin
Yesterday, we discussed some general observations from the Annual Meeting for the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) group and discussed some significant efforts and accomplishments by the (suddenly heavily talked about) EDRM Data Set project. Here are some updates from other projects within EDRM.
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May 09, 2013
By Doug Austin
The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Project was created in May 2005 by George Socha of Socha Consulting LLC and Tom Gelbmann of Gelbmann & Associates to address the lack of standards and guidelines in the electronic discovery market. Now, beginning its ninth year of operation with its annual meeting in St. Paul, MN, EDRM is accomplishing more than ever to address those needs. Here are some highlights from the meeting, and an update regarding the (suddenly heavily talked about) EDRM Data Set project.
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