Whether you are the requesting or producing party in litigation, it's important to consider the options for production formats. The chosen production format will affect the cost of discovery and in some case, the ease of review of the produced documents.

The preferred way to resolve legal cases is with behind the scenes “deals” that are often done even before it reaches a judge and jury. Rather than undergoing an expensive and time-consuming court hearing, these “deals” can eradicate the entire process while potentially benefiting both parties to a certain degree.

Digital WarRoom supports a range of eDiscovery educational initiatives. Several organizations offer a range of services from eDiscovery training, to eDiscovery courses, networking and resources. We believe in Just, Speedy and Inexpensive eDiscovery. Many of the resources and initiatives we support are important catalysts in making eDiscovery accessible for all sized firms and all sized cases. These orgs are great opportunities to break into an eDiscovery career, advance a professional resume and gain knowledge from established eDiscovery veterans. I’ll also recommend a range of eDiscovery blogs, eDiscovery podcasts and eDiscovery books to stay up to date on trends and thought leadership.

Email is one of the most commonly collected forms of electronically stored information in legal matters. When a person or company is subpoenaed, the requesting party will most likely ask for all or a subset of the email box of each potentially relevant custodian. The search, interview, and legal hold process may be time-consuming, but just know that a good amount of the relevant data you are looking for more often than not is in email format. Both the producing party and the custodians themselves can use export functionality within their email application of choice to collect and deliver the email files in question. This pre-existing functionality should make it easier for lawyers to instruct custodians on proper preservation and collection practices.

Legal Technology Definition Legal technology is a broad term which describes a wide range of software and services which support law firms and legal teams. This could include practice management software, billing/time tracking software, ediscovery software, document management software, or even physical hardware such as a scanner.

What is the EDRM The EDRM (Electronic Discovery Reference Model) is an eDiscovery workflow and framework that the legal and IT fields accept as broad outline for the steps to consider throughout the eDiscovery lifecycle in the United States. The EDRM model has been around since 2005, and has stood the test of time.

General Challenges With Social Media ESI Social media is a crucial form of ESI. The average American spends 5.4 hours/day on their smartphone which is heavily influenced by social media usage. There is reasonable potential for responsive data and ESI to exist within social media. The question is – What are you looking for? This may influence the next question. Which platforms should you ask about or check? While the data potential within social media may seem so incredibly high, new research may also have us pumping the breaks.

What Are Email Threads? Email threads represent a group of emails all originating from the same email. These email thread groupings are convenient constructs for which eDiscovery tools and reviewers can logically define a conversation. For the purpose of understanding email threads, think of these conversations as branches. Emails will often branch off in many directions as senders cc, bcc or forward the email to different recipients.

What is eDiscovery Document Production? eDiscovery document production refers to the process of disclosing electronically stored information (ESI) and documents relevant to a legal investigation or litigation. It involves identifying, collecting, reviewing, and producing documents and data as required by legal obligations and agreements. This process is governed by rules and guidelines such as Rule 34a of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which outlines the responsibilities and requirements for parties involved in litigation to exchange relevant information. Step 1: Understand Your Obligations and Requirements In litigation, the party to which a document production request is directed must disclose all documents and ESI relevant to a legal investigation, with the exception that documents can be withheld due to privilege. Rule 34a of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) states that a party may serve on any other party a request [to produce documents and esi] so long as that request isn’t unduly burdensome, according to Rule 26b.

A data map is a structured analysis of the target company's sources of data which could be potentially relevant to a legal investigation. During an eDiscovery project, the identification stage is about gaining a complete understanding of this data map and how it relates to the organizational (org) chart. Some companies will have a data map, an org chart and specific data retention policies already prepared and in place. These practices can vary between companies and even between departments. When litigation becomes imminent, you may be in a rush to send out a legal hold to prevent intentional or unintended destruction of data. Your eDiscovery workflow may follow a specific, defined order, or more commonly your discovery plan may allow you to come back for second and third rounds of data identification. It is a best practice to put together an accurate data map and continue to revisit it, thereby adding and removing data sources as you gain a more thorough understanding of the data and formally define the scope of the investigation.

The cornerstone of the your legal relationship with your lawyer is attorney-client privilege. Guarding privileged information is critical throughout the discovery process. In order to assert privilege and withhold potentially relevant documents, the attorney or litigation support professional must prepare a privilege log entry associated with each document subject to the privilege.

This eDiscovery key terms list is the first step in understanding our tool. Our key terms are sequenced to highlight the timing in which each process will arise in your workflow.

Digital WarRoom is an eDiscovery software platform that provides the capability for law firms and legal departments to perform robust document review. Once you preserve and collect all the data that could be potentially relevant to your investigation, you should process it into an eDiscovery tool. This will involve extracting all possible metadata as well as indexing the words in your files. Once all your data is processed, the main role of eDiscovery software is to help you cull the data and make a range of decisions on each document. We call this your “attorney work product”. As you mark documents, add descriptions and create privilege logs, you are creating metadata which will now be associated with each document.

What is deduping? De-duplication is the removal of duplicate documents from your data set. Deduping in and of itself is an easy decision – do I want to review five documents or one? In most cases deduping can prevent reviewers from reviewing the same document many times. Many of our clients don’t want to be overwhelmed by the number of documents that they have.

What Is Early Case Assessment? Early case Assessment (ECA) is an initial, general analysis of custodians and their data for the purpose of narrowing and defining scope. This practice can be repeated and will occur at multiple points in the EDRM. Throughout the ECA process, you will gain an understanding of document quantity to inform cost expectations, and document quality to inform how you will negotiate the scope of the investigation and the definition of gross relevance. This will be one of several important topics to be discussed at your ongoing 26(f) conference of the parties. How you proceed should tie in closely with your case strategy, budget expectations, and overall risk assessment.