E-Discovery Rules Applied to Social Media: What This Means in Practical Terms for Businesses

http://ow.ly/96a36

An article by Michelle Sherman posted on the findlaw.com website.

This article discusses the Federal Civil Rules of Procedure and the impact that eDiscovery is having upon the use of social media networks.

The article discusses social media use by corporations and states, "These communications and online activity should be thought of as an extension of "electronically stored information" ("ESI") and the discovery rules that apply when a company is in a legal dispute that would trigger a duty to preserve company emails and electronic documents. When the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended in 2006 to include ESI, the term was "intended to be read expansively to include all current and future electronic storage mediums." Notes of the Advisory Committee to the 2006 Amendments to Rule 34. It does not matter how brief the storage period, courts will treat the information as discoverable. Accordingly, even storage in the "cloud" or on a social networking site will be treated as discoverable ESI."

The article provides some tips as to how to address obligations associated with preservation of social media information.  Included in the tips provided by the article, the author states, "Companies should update their document retention policy to include social media activity. The procedures that the company is following for e-mails in terms of storage and retention periods may be a good starting point. By having established processes and following them, adversaries in litigation will have a hard time arguing that the company has destroyed relevant, and possibly damaging information. The standard for preservation is "reasonableness and proportionality" so modeling it after the procedure for retention of company emails makes sense and is internally consistent."