This past weekend, we passed a milestone — 100 days since the enacting of the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as they relate to eDiscovery. In summary, those Rules attempt to give courts guidance for how to treat digital data and information, in whatever form and context it is in.

The Rules try to contain the ever escalating costs that plaintiffs and defendants. So spreadsheets, letters, contracts, e-mails and all of those files that are stored on disk and on tape, on and off the network can, should, and must be “discoverable” to all of the parties engaged in litigation.

So, after 100 days, how are the Rules standing up.

That’s what we’ll be talking about here.

The file is gone. It’s not in the recycle bin. You’ve done a complete search of your files for it, and now the panic sets in. It’s vanished. You may have even asked people to look through their e-mail because maybe you sent it to them (you didn’t). Oops. Now what?

Hours, days, maybe even years, of hard work seem to be lost. Wait! Don’t touch that PC! Every action you take on your PC at this point may be destroying what is left of your file. It’s not too late yet. You’ve possibly heard that things that are deleted are never really deleted, but you may also think that it will cost you thousands of dollars to recover deleted files once you’ve emptied the recycle bin. Suffice it to say, unless you are embroiled in complicated e-Discovery or forensic legal proceedings where preservation is a requirement, recovering some deleted files for you may cost no more than a tune-up for your car.

MetaLINCS™, a leading provider of packaged E-Discovery software for litigation readiness and compliance-related investigations, today announced the Department of Justice (DOJ) Anti-Trust Division is extending its use of the MetaLINCS Enterprise E-Discovery Suite™ for use in corporate oversight and enforcement actions. Featuring the industry’s first guided analysis technology, the MetaLINCS Enterprise E-Discovery Suite helps the DOJ speed up the process of discovering relevant information within electronic messages and documents, and improves the accuracy of investigations. MetaLINCS software enables the DOJ to use early analysis functionality to quickly locate important information exchanges between key players prior to reviewing each document.

E-Discovery is now the most costly component of the legal and investigatory process, and as it grows in complexity, the associated costs and risks continue to soar. The ability to assess cases at their earliest stages can reveal important information quickly, reducing overall E-Discovery costs by as much as 75 percent. Early assessment can also lead counsel to conclude that 80 percent of the data they processed is irrelevant, not requiring further examination. Such early insight can inform initial strategic decision-making and drive more favorable case outcomes.

Companies turn to software for storing, retrieving electronic documents

With its early embrace of Linux and its highly reliable online banking site, KeyBank NA is among the most efficient, cutting-edge banks in the U.S. when it comes to IT — except in one area, until recently.

When Al Coppolo was asked by lawyers at the KeyCorp operating unit to produce old e-mails for litigation or regulatory compliance reasons, he would have as many as four members of his IT team trudge to an offsite storage facility to retrieve tapes, then mount them on servers and painstakingly search for the requested messages.

“It was a completely manual environment,” said Coppolo, who is executive vice president and director of infrastructure at Cleveland-based KeyBank. “Sometimes we would have to look through multiple copies of the same e-mail on multiple tapes if there were multiple replies.”

The process was so laborious and time-consuming that usually his team just barely met a 30-day internal deadline for producing e-mails. And, Coppolo noted, the number of legal requests was only growing. Moreover, new federal e-discovery rules went into effect in December that spelled out requirements for submitting electronic documents – including e-mail and instant messaging logs – as evidence in civil court cases.

Users turn to software for storing and retrieving e-mails, instant messages

With its early embrace of Linux and its highly reliable online banking site, KeyBank NA is among the most efficient, cutting-edge banks in the U.S. when it comes to IT — but that wasn’t the case in one area until recently.

When Al Coppolo was asked by lawyers at the KeyCorp operating unit to produce old e-mails for litigation or regulatory compliance, he would have as many as four members of his IT team trudge to an off-site storage facility to retrieve tapes, mount them on servers and painstakingly search for the requested messages.

“It was a completely manual environment,” said Coppolo, executive vice president and director of infrastructure at Cleveland-based KeyBank. “Sometimes we would have to look through copies of the same e-mail on multiple tapes if there were multiple replies.”

Growth, debate and change will be the norm in 2007 when it comes to the expansion and evolution of e-discovery technology according to an analysis of the e-discovery industry discussed and announced today by the newly formed LexisNexis® Discovery Services group.

As part of its participation in Legal Tech® New York, the largest legal technology event of the year, LexisNexis Vice President of Industry Relations, Courtney Ingraffia Barton, Esq. and Director of Data Collection & Forensic Services, Tom Williams, hosted a session in which they reviewed the top issues in e-discovery in 2006 and predicted the top trends for 2007.

“In time the ‘e’ in ‘e-discovery’ will disappear, illuminating the fact that document production in electronic form is fast becoming a routine part of all discovery,” said Barton. “2007 will see this evolution progress significantly as the primary trends in the industry drive corporations to collaborate across business units to create systems that combine information management with e-discovery, and partnering with market leaders in the field who can provide scalable end-to-end Total Practice Solutions.”
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IT professionals can save themselves a great deal of hassle by working with counsel to standardize on a communication methodology that addresses potential discovery-related activity. A useful strategy would define a communication channel with counsel whereby IT personnel can be brought in to the discovery process as early as possible.

If you’re like most of us in IT, you probably have a relatively small number of individuals in your firm that you’re used to working with fairly closely.

For example, if you’re a development manager, you probably work closely on a daily basis with the business folks to understand their requirements for the systems you develop. If you’re a network architect, you might work closely with software architects in order to optimize the network to support the applications Get the Facts on BlackBerry Business Solutions that people use daily.

Everybody likes having a good laugh at a silly mistake. But sometimes little flubs can be costly, especially when they’re common practice.

Because of its casual nature and ease of use, e-mail has come to play a major role in business relations and enterprise development. It’s also an inadvertent medium for plenty of extra-office faux-pas between clients. That’s why the e-mail governance software specialists at MessageGate did some R&D to hone their take on the top 10 e-mail blunders of the year.

Here’s the Top 10, and a bit of illustrative commentary. Sound familiar? Then maybe it’s time to start tightening the reins on e-mail relations between your four walls:

10. Politics As Usual
MessageGate cites the woeful tale of a Small Business Administration lawyer who gets canned after sending and mailing over 100 e-mails favouring California’s Green Party through his government computer.
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In the past few months, many articles have been written on the electronic discovery changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). While most of these have been on the mark, others have told only part of the story or left readers with inaccurate or incomplete information.

For example, depending on what you read, you may believe either or both of the following statements:

• The courts now require that your company maintain a copy of every e-mail message, document, spreadsheet and file an employee creates, sends or receives.
• When electronic discovery occurs, you create a copy of the data and ship it off to the parties (or counsel for the parties) on the other side of the case, and they do the same.

As it turns out, neither of these statements is true.

New federal rules will take effect next month requiring corporations to produce documents in legal cases or face stiff penalties, raising yet another regulatory compliance issue for IT departments.

On December 1, several amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure regarding a company’s duty to preserve and produce electronically stored information (ESI) in the face of litigation — or pending litigation — are scheduled to take effect. The rules (specifically Civil Rules 16, 26, 33, 34 and 37) have already been adopted in some states, like New Jersey, and other states, including Texas and California, have already implemented some of the new rules.

As with most new compliance rules, there is some confusion and hand-wringing on the part of enterprises as to what the amendments really mean. In this case, the big question companies are asking of their attorneys, IT people, vendors and compliance officers is: Do the new rules mean we have to drastically alter the way we preserve, retrieve and produce electronic data? The answer to that question: It depends. It depends on what practices, procedures and technology you already have in place (if any), and how susceptible your enterprise is to a lawsuit.

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