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Do the collection and evaluation of electronic records for use in court require a professional license? In litigation a mistake on this question can surprisingly cause a party to lose a lawsuit. A Texas judge ruled the company operating a red-light enforcement camera (Affiliated Computer Services (ACS)) was acting illegally because it did not have continue…

A recent case in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Rhoads Indus., Inc. v. Bldg. Materials Corp. of Am., 2008 WL 4916026 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 14, 2008), applied Rule 502 of the Federal Rules of Evidence (entitled Attorney-Client Privilege and Work Product; Limitations on Waiver) where the reasonableness of the producing party's due diligence became an issue. The Court took a softer stance on the onerous requirements articulated in Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc., 250 F.R.D. 251 (D.Md.2008). However, the Court cautions that parties who are warned about the accidental production of privileged materials and then fail to mitigate their own accidental production will waive the privilege (e.g. the attorney-client or attorney-work product privileges). The Court also highlighted the importance of paying special attention to search methodologies, including the keywords used, the software used, and the statistical validity of the methods used.

The circuit court underscored Qualcomm's litigation (ediscovery) misconduct impacting its perception of the standards body misconduct: In our view, the litigation misconduct findings were sufficient standing alone to support the exceptional case determination here, and in the circumstances of the present case it was not error for the district court to additionally consider the related continue…

Tom Mighell, author of Inter Alia, is one of the finalists for the ABA Journal Blawg 100 Technology category.  Knowing Tom (my colleague at Fios), he will probably vote for his co-author, Dennis Kennedy (The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together), also on the ballot. Hot competition with Kevin O, continue…

A law firm in Louisiana is challenging new advertising rules that appear to hinder lawyers' ability to maintain blogs or otherwise harness online media. Read more

Apple has sold enterprise-class storage hardware and sotware for years, but the company has yet to embrace systematic e-mail and document retention policies that are common among publicly traded companies. Read more

by Conrad Jacoby As has been made explicitly clear in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, relevant information is potentially discoverable, regardless of where and how it has been stored.  As a consequence, traditional definitions of “document” no longer match real life, since relevant information may be as likely to be stored in a database continue…

Microsoft is being sued for deceptive marketing practices in U.S. District Court in Seattle over claims that the changes were made to help Intel sell off millions of existing chipsets. Read this story from RedmondMag.com indicating that court documents may contain a "smoking gun" reference to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's participation.

The days of limited ediscovery (edisclosure) in England are over.  Digicel will have an effect similar to Zubulake in the States, spurring a new level of adoption of edisclosure in England and Wales.

For those of us stateside, disclosure and discovery are not synonyms.  Parties disclose rather than receiving a request for production (discovery).

At the ABA continue…

By now every lawyer and litigation support professional should know that all forms of electronic information are discoverable. However, relatively few professionals have had experience handling large volumes of digital voice recordings — possibly because counsel are not aware of options for processing such data, and possibly because of misperceptions about the costs or technical continue…

This article by Joe Howie from the ALSP Update provides an overview of processing voice files and describes how technology from Nexidia and its e-discovery partners, like Fios, can be used to review and produce such files. Read the full article here.