Recent amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure relating to electronically stored information raise the bar for what will be expected of e-discovery in terms of employers’ monitoring and policies. Employers will ultimately feel the brunt of these sweeping changes, with dramatic changes to the way discovery will be conducted in federal court, where most discrimination suits are filed.

With more than 80 percent of electronic documents never printed and 60 billion plus e-mail messages sent every day, e-discovery has been an important issue for some time.

However, the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure relating to electronically stored information (ESI)—which went into effect December 1, 2006—raise the bar for what will be expected of e-discovery in terms of employers’ monitoring and policies. Employers will ultimately feel the brunt of these sweeping changes, with dramatic changes to the way discovery will be conducted in federal court, where most discrimination suits are filed.