No Consensus Reached on Preservation: Discovery Subcommittee Holds Mini-Conference on September 9, 2011

http://ow.ly/6suwP

Article by David J. Kessler and Emily Johnston, published by Fulbright & Jaworski.

This article discusses the conference recently held regarding possible revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

As the article states, "The Discovery Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules convened a mini-conference in order to gather information and determine whether it is time to develop recommendations for a change to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to address preservation issues."

The authors mention that no resolution was reached at the conference, "While the conference resulted in a very detailed discussion of the major issues involved, no resolution was reached regarding whether a rule should be implemented at all or on the approach such a rule would take if implemented."

Specific details about how the conference was structured are provided in the article.  The conference was meant to address the following issues:

Is Preservation Even a Problem that Needs to be Addressed?;
Is Technology Going to Solve Preservation or Make it Worse?; and
If a Rule is Necessary, How Should it be Crafted?