Crane on Law by James Crane

Corporate counsel is always dealing with the challenges of controlling costs and providing their corporate client with the most defensible position.  One question that always comes up is "why shouldn't we just collect our own data?"  It's a good question.  Many corporations have an IT department staffed with talented and available personnel. 

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Aristotle thought that earthquakes were caused by subterranean winds.  OK, so he was a little off, according the USGS - tectonic plate movement simply fell outside his realm of experience.  Like Aristotle, though, many attorneys think their methods are as good as it gets.  What we attorneys have to learn is that there is always room for improvement.  This is especially true with legal technology tools.  Advances in scanning and optical character recognition, and new efficiencies in capturing and organizing digital data allow the technologically astute practitioner to nimbly navigate through a tangled jungle of documents.  This saves the client money and ensures more accurate discovery. 

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Proofpoint has released results from a March 2008 survey of 301 US companies with more than 20,000 employees regarding email and data loss. The highlights from the responses include:

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One of the basic terms you will encounter in computer forensics is MD5. MD5 (message-digest algorithm 5) is the most commonly used cryptographic hash function with a 128-bit hash value and is represented by a 32 digit hexadecimal number. It was designed by MIT professor Ron Rivest in 1991 and first published in 1992. If you have a deep interest in cryptography and computer forensics, check out his site here. He maintains many links to resources and his published works.

In the world of corporate defense, production gaps can turn a winnable case upside down the moment the opposing party switches into discovery attack mode. Any seemingly small error in gathering or producing data invites the spectre of spoliation. If the corporate client is unable to present a detailed explanation and justification for any alleged oversight, sanctions will probably follow.

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Well, IQPC's E-Discovery Conference was a big success. Our discussion was well received, and I gained some important insights from the other speakers and attendees. One of the programs featured Chief US Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck of the Southern District of New York and Chief District Judge James Rosenbaum of the District of Minnesota. Both gentlemen were extremely interesting and tech-savvy, and posed some thought-provoking items.

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The Altep team is heading to Las Vegas next week to attend the IQPC 5 th E-Discovery Conference and present our program entitled "Defending Class Actions Across Multiple Jurisdictions." I will be moderating a talented panel with decades of experience in e-discovery, serial litigation, using technology in large-scale actions. We’ll talk about considerations prior to class action certification, all the way through productions in multiple jurisdictions. We’ll examine best practices for privilege log creation and re-purposing consistent productions to avoid discovery gaps and reduce plaintiff opportunities to allege spoliation.

Many of your have confirmed that you will be there and we’re looking forward to meeting all of you in person!

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting Altep’s Quarterly e-Discovery Case Law Update to the Tampa Bay Paralegals Association at the Tampa Club. (TBPA = http://www.tbpa.org/ and Tampa Club = http://www.thetampaclub.com/tampa_club.htm). It was a great venue and an outstanding group of people. I have to offer a special thanks to Yvonne DeAntoneo and Leslie Matthews!! I look forward to presenting a review of online review platforms at their fall technology conference.

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I could go many different directions with a headline about the costs of e-discovery. I could discuss cost-saving techniques, like I did here (http://www.altep.com/content/view/3/52/). I could explain how you often “get what you pay for” … you know there’s a reason why that vendor charges 50% less than all of the competitors…

However, the focus today is just to break down the basic categories of cost associated with executing the e-discovery part of a case.

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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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