Crane on Law by James Crane

One of the most important considerations in executing a large-scale action is how to organize the data population prior to review. If the discovery team is using the proper technological tools, you can successfully limit the review of unnecessary material and bring the most relevant documents forward by using filtering.

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Many attorneys are in the very early stages of accepting technological tools to deal with massive discovery challenges. Even in cases involving more than a hundred thousand documents, counsel still asks that digital documents be blown-back to paper for review, and then produced as paper to the opposing party. My question is, WHY? I can only assume that it's due to lack of training and knowlege regarding use of the available technologies, and people's sense of comfort with the “traditional” ways in which things have always been done.

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Last month, the District Court of the Southern Division of the Eastern District of Michigan issued an opinion and order regarding some interesting discovery issues in an overtime collection action in Henry v. Quicken Loans, Inc. (2008 WL 474127). The 422 Henry plaintiffs worked as loan consultants for the defendant. Plaintiffs requested all emails from all the plaintiffs and their 32 team leaders that were generated during a three month period.

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The ABA Section of Litigation put together a great event in Scottsdale, Arizonalast week. The programs were interesting and I met many outstanding attorneys. The event opened with the General Counsel Forum discussing some of the challenges of advising corporations, maintaining the legal department, and working with outside counsel. Cornell Boggs, General Counsel of Coors Brewing Company, had some riveting commentary about being solicited by law firms hoping to represent Coors. In a nutshell, if you’re going to approach a company to offer legal services, please have an idea of their litigation challenges and their industry.

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I still get asked questions about de-duplication: What is it? Why is it important? So, in order to please those folks, as well as those who have not asked yet, here’s a quick summary.

De-duplication is the process of reducing a data population by identifying and removing duplicate emails and/or non-email files. The digital signatures (MD5 hash codes) of each file are compared against each other and matches are marked as duplicates. Files marked as duplicates can be suppressed from further processing. For those that are suppressed, Altep maintains an audit trail for 100% file accountability. Reducing the population by de-duping is a critical success factor in keeping the overall litigation costs down by reducing processing costs and attorney review time.

 

I found the Best Buy Stores, L.P. v. Developers Diversified Realty Corp., (2007 WL 4230806, D. Minn. Nov. 29, 2007), to be a very interesting case regarding reasonable accessibility. Best Buy v. Developers is a breach of contract case with about $800,000 in alleged damages at stake. The defendants filed a motion to compel Best Buy to restore a database used for litigation in an earlier unrelated case to searchable form. Best Buy argued that the data was not reasonably accessible because it would cost at least $124, 000 to restore the offline database.

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Do you know this man? I have asked that question in a presentation and I’ve had “John McCain” shouted out more than once.

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As promised yesterday, here are the top 5 challenges the Civil Rules Advisory Committee faced when revising the Federal Rules to account for Electronically Stored Information (ESI).

 

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More than a year has passed since the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended to account for Electronically Stored Information (ESI) on December 1, 2006, and an enormous amount of explaining, decrying, discussion and analysis has surrounded them since that day. I have been on the receiving end of countless emails promoting e-discovery CLEs, seminars, workshops, webinars and conferences. It seems like every month, someone hosts the Annual e-Discovery Conference That You Just Can’t Afford To Miss. I admit, I’ve missed a few. However, I think I’m going to be alright. You will be too. In the e-Discovery frenzy, we just have to remember that we’re still talking about discovery. We all know discovery. Now we just have to focus on getting the information.