Responding to Ediscovery Demands

E-discovery has added more complexity in litigations, issues such as the extent as to which e-discovery demands should be allowed by the courts has been brought up in a number of cases. Needless to say, companies should make sure of having a reliable e-discovery software in order to respond intelligently to e-discovery requests. "E-Discovery Pitfalls and Practice Tips" by Timothy B. Parlin sums up some of the issues on responding to e-discovery demands.

Understanding the e-discovery rules is critical in today's litigation environment. The Mancia v. Mayflower Textile Servs. Co., 253 F.R.D. 354 (D. Md. 2008), and Treppel v. Biovail Corp., 249 F.R.D. 111 (S.D.N.Y. 2008), cases demonstrate the pitfalls that can occur. This article will analyze these cases and detail practice tips for propounding and responding to e-discovery demands.

The Mancia case required litigants to cooperate and communicate during the discovery process to minimize the costs and burdens of discovery. While Mancia does not specifically address e-discovery issues, it could have a wide-ranging effect on cases that involve massive amounts of electronically stored information.

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Opportunities in e-Discovery

Here's a clip from Dice TV discussing new opportunities for IT professionals as more and more businesses become concerned about electronic discovery.



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TREC Legal Track 2008 Tackles Human Role In Ediscovery Tasks

The 2008 Text Retrieval Conference Legal Track has explored the role of humans in conducting ediscovery tasks. Now on its third year in of technical research on how to use search technology in litigation, explores how the human factor becomes an important aspect in search technology in litigation. Jason Krause for Law.com reports:

The Text Retrieval Conference Legal Track 2008 has completed a third year of technical research on how to use search technology in litigation. Over the years, TREC Legal Track has become a proving ground to test advanced search technology as applied to e-discovery tasks. In 2008, it also explored a different aspect of the e-discovery problem: the role of human beings.

TREC Legal Track is a litigation-focused research project that explores and exploits the limitations of search technology in litigation. The ultimate goal is to develop objective criteria for comparing methods of searching large collections of documents in civil litigation. "We've come a long way in the current state of the art in artificial intelligence, but we've just begun to recognize that humans, and not just computing power, are vitally important," says Bruce Hedin of H5, a legal technology industry researcher and a coordinator for TREC Legal Track.

The Legal Track compared the commonly used Boolean keyword search strategy, which uses commands like "AND," "OR" and proximity searching, to newer search technologies using clusters, concepts and probability theories to discovery content relevant to a legal dispute. Using a database of tobacco litigation documents and fictitious legal complaints as a starting point, Boolean searchers returned between 22 and 57 percent of all relevant documents. But it turned out that more advanced search technology wasn't able to do much better than Boolean searching.

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What You Should Know About Record Retention Policies

Today's companies have been facing legal scrutiny from all sorts of direction which have caused a huge increase in legal costs of doing business. This situation have caused them to identify sources of legal risks and come up with solutions to minimize this risks. With the huge volume of legally sensitive documents that companies produce each year, many businesses are struggling to implement effective record retention policies to eliminate, or at least minimize document-related risks.

But before companies should start on evaluating their current record retention policies, here are certain things that we should know about record retention policies:

It's a given fact that every business must have an existing record retention policy. But successfully implementing one that is highly reliable takes more than employing traditional data management systems. Having a good record retention policy gives companies a chance to better respond to ediscovery request of files when facing litigations. With today's complicated business environment, how important is it really to have a sound record retention policy? Here are some things businesses ought to know about the importance of having a good record retention policy.

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Best Record Retention Practices

Over the past few years, when regulatory compliance have steadily been increasing and businesses have been facing regulations that are getting tighter by the moment, companies have been searching for the best record retention practices that they could incorporate in their day to day business routines. Record retention is the process of storing and protecting information encountered in the course of business so that they may be retrieved when a company faces regulatory compliance, legal matters, or for performance evaluation.

The main cause as to why businesses seek for a record retention policy is because mismanaged documents may mean millions of dollars in fines and litigation cost .With a large portion of the information that businesses encounter over its span of operation being legally sensitive, poor record retention practices will only increase legal and document related risks.

Best record retention practices suggest that companies should know what information to keep to be ready for regulatory compliance requests and other legal matters but at the same know until when to keep them to so as not to be burdened with the cost of storing these information. Making sure that best record retention practices is being observed by everyone inside a company is hard but necessary. But a big factor that contributes to having a good corporate record retention program is the technology that is being employed. Best record retention practices suggest that investing in an electronic discovery software that could monitor document activities within the company is essential to safeguard the company for legal risks and costs.

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The Importance of Having Effective Retention Policies

It has always been a burden to the IT company, the amount of tedious work managing loads of electronically stored information (ESI). It has caused businesses especially industry giants to shell out resources to invest in document management systems, e discovery softwares, and services of IT and legal experts. With all these to take into consideration, why do companies still need to have a record retention policy running? It is for the simple reason that having no record retention policies, or one that works, means bigger trouble for any business.


For companies earning millions of dollars in revenues each year, facing multiple litigations at a given time is almost a normal part of day to day business. This unfriendly legal environment and the tightening regulations brings into existence the necessity of for companies to be litigation ready at all times. Having a sound record retention policy gives companies an opportunity to react intelligently to ediscovery requests and in reality decreases company expenditures through minimizing ediscovery and litigation costs. Cases wherein litigation readiness from having a sound record retention policy would have played a vital role in the outcome of the case include the famous Zubulake v. UBS Warburg case - $29m in fees shouldered by UBS Warburg as a result of the guilty verdict on accusations of gender discrimination and illegal retaliation by former employee Laura Zubulake, The Ernst v. Merck Vioxx Trial - a lawsuit filed by the family of the late marathon runner Robert Ernst which late cost Merck $253M after Ernst's cause of death have been attributed to the side effects of using Vioxx, and the Perelman v. Morgan Stanley - $1.45B in fines to be paid to Ron Perelman after losing to a case related to Perelman's 1998 sale of his Coleman camping gear company to Sunbeam.



Knowing what to store and when to dispose out of date information that are no longer needed will not be a problem if companies have stable record retention policies. This is crucial because having to store every electronic data that passes through the company becomes costly and impractical as the amount of data over time will grow into significant size. On the other hand, deleting data that has not undergone careful record retention practices may become a liability for companies.

Though companies have acknowledged the need for a record retention policy, because of the complexity involved in the management of electronic data, there have been much debate on the best way to establish a reliable record retention policy. But for a good start, companies should take into consideration electronic discovery software and services to enhance the features provided by traditional management systems alone.

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