How to Look Like a Rube in Three Easy Steps

Josh Gilliland and his always-entertaining “Bow Tie Law’s Blog” turn this week to the case of In re NetBank, Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 69031 (N.D. Ga. Aug. 7, 2009), in which the producing party went to great lengths to prove to opposing counsel and the court that they knew absolutely NOTHING about e-Discovery.

The Defendants [...]

Why ALL Search Methods Stink

Yep, my headline for this post is pretty strongly-worded … but it’s also pretty accurate.  The fact is, sanction-happy judges and vague, utopian court rules regarding ESI searches don’t mix, when you’re dealing with mounds of mostly-random electronic data.

Don’t take my word for it.  Eric P. Mandel writes to the EDD Update blog about the [...]

DE Chancery: Their Spoliation May Be Your Fault

From the National Law Journal, Sheri Qualters reports on the Delaware Court of Chancery’s recent spate of decisions regarding several aspects of e-discovery practice.  Most significant to me is Beard Research Inc. v. Kates, in which plaintiffs were granted an adverse inference instruction for missing computer evidence.  The key language:

If the parties do not focus [...]

Keyword Searching Is Pretty Good After All

From Jason Krause on Law.com comes this article regarding the Text Retrieval Conference Legal Track 2008.  The main points to take from this article are that, properly used, Boolean keyword searching is equally as effective as more “advanced” search technologies such as clustering and concept searching. 

However, as the article points out, Judge Peck (in Gross Construction v. [...]

Saving Time and Money in Document Review

From the Texas Lawyer (part of the Incisive Media megagroup) comes this useful article on how to effectively manage document reviews.  LitManager is an outstanding review tool to help keep costs under control, but there is no substitute for managing the review process itself effectively to ensure that it gets done right the first time.

California: Backup Tapes Are About To Be “Accessible”

There has been a bit of debate (okay, a LOT of debate) over what makes backup tapes truly “inaccessible”.  The California Assembly is on the verge of making that discussion moot.  From Law.com, this article agrees with their proposed new rule of evidence that it’s no longer necessary to consider backup data is presumptively inaccessible:

Zubulake’s bright-line test [...]