Shenwick v. Twitter, Inc. (N.D. Cal. Feb 7, 2018) provides companies with a precedent to argue that they generally should not have to produce direct communications between employees (such as most text messages) where the employees are not separately named parties in the litigation.Overview:In this securities class action suit, the plaintiffs motioned to compel the defendant, Twitter, to produce direct messages sent within Twitter between their employees.This case stems from charges that Twitter and its former CEO and current executives violated the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by misleading investors, resulting in artificially... Read More

Just a few weeks ago, e-discovery issues had a brief moment in the Supreme Court when the court heard arguments in United States v. Microsoft, a case that brought issues of cross-border discovery under the Stored Communications Act into sharp focus. I was particularly curious on how the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case would resolve looming conflicts between GDPR, the transnational nature of cloud computing, and e-discovery obligations. The drama of waiting for the Court’s ruling, though, was defused in two quick steps. Congress passed the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of... Read More

Commonly referred to as a "digital fingerprint," a hash value is a special encryption code that is associated with each computer file. Hash values provide digital files with a unique identifier that corresponds to its contents. If the contents change, the file's hashtag will change as well, indicating that the file is not the same as it was before. In e-discovery, one can compare hash values before and after collection to verify that a file is the same before and after collection. To understand how MD5 hashing relates to e-discovery one must... Read More

In this entry in our series on interesting e-discovery data points, I'd like to dig into a topic that's been receiving a lot of attention--and will continue to do so for the next month and a half at least: GDPR, cross-border discovery, and the increasing conflict between organizations' domestic e-discovery obligations and international privacy regulations. Norton Rose Fulbright's 2017 Litigation Trends Annual Survey covered the question of international regulations with a couple of data points, and at the surface level, they tell two very different stories about the intersection of e-discovery and international regulations.The first... Read More

Sometimes it's easier to believe things just are the way we want them to be... but when that happens, reality has a way of sneaking up and reminding us of what's really going on. If you haven't been paying attention to the fuss about GDPR going live next month... you may just be in for a rude awakening when you realize just how big the numbers can get when you're talking about 4% of an enterprise's revenue. If that just opened your eyes, then sign up now for Exterro and Yerra Solution's May... Read More

During a recent webinar entitled, In-Place Preservation: Locking Down Data Without Collecting It, Bobbi Basile, Managing Director of HBR Consulting, defined in-place preservation as, “a means to efficiently lock down the data [relevant to a legal matter] and prevent it from being destroyed.” In the day-to-day practice of e-discovery, the operative word in this definition is “efficiently,” as we still face challenges with this process. Many of us in the legal industry came of age professionally studying the EDRM to help us get our arms around the phases of the e-discovery process.  Fast... Read More

Successful e-discovery skills include legal knowledge, the application of technology, business judgement, and project management skills. Few e-discovery resources can claim to be truly comprehensive. Until now.One that can is Exterro’s Definitive Guide to E-Discovery. It contains 90 pages of in-depth information, spanning the entire EDRM. Each chapter features best practices, technology tips, analysis of case law and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), and expert commentary from e-discovery thought leaders.E-DISCOVERY PROJECT MANAGEMENTE-Discovery is often treated as a reactive activity without defined, repeatable processes, resulting in missed deadlines, lost evidence, and miscommunications. This... Read More