The article below is a repost of Robert Cruz's November 13, 2018 post on the Smarsh blog. Just finished a terrific week with some of our most important clients, discussing key challenges and best practices they see emerging in the areas of capturing and controlling new communications sources.  We talked with firms large and small, US-based and multi-national, but the conclusion was the same: the ways that they communicate externally and collaborate internally has undergone a fundamental and irreversible revolution. Much of this change is driven by user demands to communicate through... Read More

It's been a while since I've posted an article that fits neatly into our recurring series on E-Discovery Statistics, but a recent survey report of in-house legal teams provided several statistics that, when examined together, present an interesting take on how and why e-discovery operations have been moving in-house.Exterro partnered with ACEDS to survey in-house legal professionals for our third annual 2018 In-House Legal Benchmarking Report. With over 100 respondents (more than ever before), this year’s report surveyed a wider distribution of companies, including more from organizations of fewer than 25,000 people than in... Read More

As a relative newcomer to e-discovery, one of the dynamics of the field that I find most interesting is the interplay between the law (typically seen as slow-moving and tradition-based) and technology (the faster-and-faster revving engine that forces change and creates new challenges). Now of course the relationship between the law and technology is not that simple; many times the institutions of the law affects technology trends as much as vice versa. In addition to bringing together these large societal forces, e-discovery also brings together people of disparate backgrounds: technologists, attorneys, project... Read More

Exterro and ACEDS recently partnered to survey over 100 members of in-house legal teams for our third annual In-House Legal Benchmarking Report in an effort to better understand how teams are managing and performing litigation services for their organizations. This year, the survey respondents included a wider distribution of companies, ranging from Fortune 500 enterprises to mid-market companies with fewer than 25,000 employees. With almost 70% of organizations performing the majority of their litigation services in-house, the top-level conclusion was quite clear. As Mary Mack, Executive Director of ACEDS, explains in the... Read More

If you’re new to e-discovery, it’s easy to think that data preservation and legal holds are, for all intents and purposes, the same thing. Although legal hold notifications (and systems to ensure that custodians comply with them) are critical to data preservation, they’re not one and the same. However, if you can’t wait to find out more about legal holds, check out our new Beginner’s Guide to Legal Holds. Since we’ll be focusing on legal holds in a later blog post, this article will lay out some additional considerations and elements... Read More

Even in a case such as Adidas America, Inc. v. TRB Acquisitions LLC, with a long, hotly contested discovery process, the court will consider many factors in making a decision about whether to dismiss a case for discovery misconduct when the harm is irreversible (i.e., relevant data is spoliated and cannot be recovered).OverviewIn this trademark infringement case, the defendants moved for case dismissal based on the plaintiffs’ perpetuation of a fraud on the court via “egregious discovery-related misconduct.” The defendants contend that the following conduct by the plaintiffs should lead the court to grant... Read More

I've had plenty of different types of headaches in my life. None of them are pleasant--the throb behind the eye of a migraine, the taut pull of a stress headache--but nothing compares to the headache of locating potentially responsive data. One great way to make sure you're locating all the responsive data is to get out there and interview custodians--both to find what they have in their possession and to better understand other potential custodians. That's why we created our Custodian Interview Template.  And if you'd rather just have a laugh, you... Read More