E-Discovery Court Pilot Programs: E-Discovery Templates that Legal Teams Should Utilize

http://ow.ly/9f5zq

An article by Mike Hamilton, J.D. posted on the e-Discovery Beat website.

This article discusses recent pilot programs being run by courts at both the federal and state levels.  The author advises personnel that is involved in a dispute where eDiscovery will be involved to be aware of these court programs as to follow their guidance to assist in establishing a workflow process.

The article provides 3 tips from the 7th Circuit's Pilot program for eDiscovery as follows, "Here are a few of the program’s specific e-discovery principles:

1. Select an e-discovery liaison/e-discovery project manager. At the beginning of a case, each litigant must appoint an e-discovery liaison who is educated about their party’s own e-discovery efforts (e.g. access to IT contacts with knowledge of their IT infrastructure and internal systems and processes).
2. Identify ESI. Filtering techniques, such as keyword searching, de-duplication and data faceting, and foreseeable preservation issues, such as how to handle RAM, updated metadata and backup data, should be discussed at the meet and confer so e-discovery preservation and collection parameters can be clearly and narrowly defined.
3. Clearly communicate when creating and responding to preservation requests. Before issuing preservation requests, specific information like the background or reasoning behind the requests must be included. When responding to a request, the responding party should identify: (1) what data it will preserve, (2) arguments concerning the request, and (3) additional preservation concerns."

The article further discusses state developments, and looks at the New York State protocols that have been recently implemented.

The article further states, "Per the words of Judge David Waxse, in the recent webcast “2012 E-Discovery Case Law Forecast: Hindsight is 20/20, “the court is not looking for a perfect e-discovery process, its only looking for a reasonable one.” These court pilot programs can serve as helpful guides for litigants seeking a “reasonable approach” for addressing the e-discovery process."