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 [...]

We Love It When People Agree With Us

Tom O’Connor is Director of the Legal Electronic Document Institute.  In this post to PivotalDiscovery.com, Tom sings the praises of hosted litigation support solutions and secure browser access to a web-based document repository.

LLM had nothing to do with this article, we promise — even though it’s nice to hear an unbiased observer write what we’ve been [...]