Party is Entitled to Plaintiff�s Personal Computer Hard Drive to Recover a Deleted Email

james.crane@altep.com — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0100

In Benton v. Dlorah, Inc. (D. Kan. Oct. 30, 2007), the plaintiff claimed gender discrimination by her university employer. It became known during discovery that the plaintiff had used her personal computer to communicate with students and deleted hundreds of relevant emails. Although the communication and destruction of emails occurred in good faith and prior to contemplation of a lawsuit, the university sought production of the hard drive to recover the deleted emails.

How Many Corporations Are Happy With Their Outside Counsel?

james.crane@altep.com — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0100

The American Corporate Counsel Association (ACCA) conducted a survey of corporate law departments to measure the satisfaction level with their outside counsel. It may not come as a big surprise, but nearly 70% of in-house attorneys are dissatisfied with the outside law firms they use, and a third of all corporations fired at least one of their law firms.

Without diving too deep into the statistics, I can tell you that the biggest issue is [...]

NFPA in Tampa: A Great Time Was Had By All

james.crane@altep.com — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0100

Imagine assembling the top paralegal professionals in the country in the same venue at one time. That’s just what happened in Tampa from October 17 to October 21 at the annual National Federation of Paralegal Associations conference. (I don’t know if their respective law departments and firms shut down while they were away).

Altep was happy to be a part of the event and we met many impressive people. In fact, one [...]

Failure to Account for �Missing� E-mails Cost Company $12.5 Million in Settlement

james.crane@altep.com — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0100

A controversy has been brewing for a few years regarding the whereabouts of Morgan Stanley’s pre-9/11 emails. In representations to arbitrators and regulators, between October 2001 and March 2005, Morgan Stanley maintained that all pre-9/11 emails were lost forever when the firm’s email servers were destroyed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Consequently, Morgan Stanley alleged they were unable to produce any pre-9/11 emails dur [...]

Corporations Continue the Trend of Bringing More Work In-House

james.crane@altep.com — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0100

The Association of Corporate Counsel 2007 Survey has been released and they accurately reflect what in-house counsel have been routinely telling me. The increased compliance requirements following Sarbanes-Oxley and increasing budget pressures have caused more resources to be directed to in-house attorneys and away from outside counsel.

Some of the general conclusions from the survey include:

The DOJ and EPA Announce a Record Settlement with American Electric Power

james.crane@altep.com — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0100

The DOJ filed a consent decree in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio to settle a longstanding lawsuit against American Electric Power (AEP). The suit which included eight states as plaintiffs ( New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maryland, and Rhode Island) settled when AEP agreed to install pollution control equipment at an estimated cost of $4.6 billion, pay $15 million, and spend $60 million on r [...]

The First Stage of the SEC�s Review of Executive Compensation is Over

james.crane@altep.com — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0100

The SEC announced on Tuesday that they have completed the first stage of their review of the executive compensation at 350 public companies. In its October 9, 2007 press release, the SEC informed us that their staff instructed the companies that they should “provide more focused disclosure of how and why they made specific executive compensation decisions.” When the SEC invests time and resources so heavily into an issue, smart companies will take [...]

State of Grace or State of Fear � How Does Your State Rate?

james.crane@altep.com — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0100

The Institute for Legal Reform, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, recently released their 2007 State Liability Systems Ranking Study. The population of respondents was comprised of 1599 in-house general counsel and senior litigators at companies with annual revenues of at least $100 million. The results were quite interesting. Here are the top 5 and bottom 5 states that have a “fair and reasonable litigation environment:” (drumroll&hel [...]

Free Case Law Database? Can It Be True?

james.crane@altep.com — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0100

When I’m out visiting with my friends in corporate law departments, we may talk about recipes, fishing, or the weather…but the conversation always comes back to “how can we do things better to save money?” It's one of my favorite topics because at Altep, we've been creating methodologies and processes that eliminate waste and save money for more than a decade.

However, as good as we are, there [...]

E-Discovery is About �Information� not Documents

james.crane@altep.com — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0100

One of the challenges of properly executing e-discovery is the loose use of language used by lawyers, IT personnel, and other persons. As an example, the amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure was careful to use the phrase Electronically Stored Information in order to account for videos, audios, photos, cds, dvds, flash drives, memory in copy machines, network data, etc.

So when you’re executing discovery in a case, be just as precise about the [...]

Blog Entries - October 2007