It seems like the artificial intelligence freight train of the past couple years is finally slowing down, at least in the e-discovery space. For as long as I've been blogging in this space (about 18 months now), there has been a pretty steady drumbeat of articles taking one of two diametrically opposed perspectives on AI: The Robot Lawyers Are Coming for Us All! or  AI Is Just Marketing Hype We've all seen these hot takes a few times--and actually, that's probably part of the problem. Any article on artificial intelligence quickly departs... Read More

Golf has a long reputation as a gentleman’s sport, one in which a self-enforced ethical code makes cheating exceedingly rare. If a golfer breaks a rule of the game, he or she is expected to self-report the violation and accept the appropriate penalty. However, Tiger Woods’ recent legal troubles may, if true, have a business owned by him in partnership with his girlfriend, in trouble for cheating. It is not this blog’s habit to take sides in public legal disputes no matter what the stakes, and certainly I’ll not be changing that... Read More

Civil litigation—especially for the defense—often feels like a purely reactive process, a series of responses to an opposing party’s actions. But in reality, it shouldn’t be—especially for organizations who have the resources to have a dedicated legal department and technology to support its members. Of course, the costs of a reactive posture fall most seriously on the members of the legal team scrambling to get work done under tight deadlines: issuing legal holds and tracking compliance; preserving data from myriad sources from mobile devices to laptops to cloud platforms; and reviewing terabytes... Read More

For the past several months, dating back to the release of Exterro and EDRM’s E-Discovery Maturity Quiz in September, this blog has looked at a variety of ways for organizations to either self-assess their e-discovery maturity, improve it, or benchmark it against their peers. Now, in its recent report on e-discovery, Defining Your E-Discovery Process Will Lower Costs and Reduce Risks, Gartner has provided another way to look at e-discovery maturity, recognizing that enterprises vary in the amount of their in-house capabilities. Where the E-Discovery Maturity Quiz, and its predecessor, EDRM’s eMSAT-... Read More

Nuvasive, Inc. v. Kormanis (M.D. N.C. Mar. 13, 2019) shows that when the duty to preserve is triggered, it’s imperative that parties take immediate measures to preserve data in a variety of locations including personal cell phones. Overview In this employment/breach of contract case, the plaintiff filed for spoliation sanctions against the defendant for deleting his “email account and willfully allow[ing] his text messages to be deleted.” Within e-discovery, the plaintiff requested text messages between key custodians. The defendant could not produce the requested text messages, because his text messages were automatically deleted... Read More

Hopefully, unlike a certain former protagonist on Game of Thrones, you differentiate between "feeling angry" and "burning a city down." Seriously, though, if you're having a tough time getting custodians to comply with your legal holds, you might want to brief them on the importance and seriousness of their obligation by reminding them of the legal consequences of failing to preserve relevant ESI. And if you'd rather just have a laugh, you can always visit our entire catalog of E-Discovery Memes and Cartoons, and feel free to share the fun with friends and... Read More

Anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with this blog knows we believe that, for many organizations, in-sourcing e-discovery operations and implementing an e-discovery platform make good sense. The benefits are clear-cut and real. It helps you ensure you’re complying with the requirements of the FRCP, reducing your risk of data spoliation and accompanying sanctions. It gives you visibility into the process, allowing you to understand where you’re succeeding, where you could do better, and make appropriate changes. It saves time, increases efficiency, and facilitates coordination between legal and IT. But at... Read More