Litigation Support Technology and News

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• Get on the Google+ eDiscovery and Legal Technology List
• Confronting E-Discovery's "Ill Defined Preservation Obligations"
• ILTA 2011 - That's a Wrap

Get on the Google+ eDiscovery and Legal Technology List Posted: 28 Aug 2011 06:34 AM PDT http://gpc.fm/l/ediscovery Using Google +? Interested in Legal Technology, eDiscovery or computer forensics? Join the new list created on Google +...the first list on Google + for this topic. We hope to see you on the list, and if you do join, thanks for doing so.

Confronting E-Discovery's "Ill Defined Preservation Obligations" Posted: 28 Aug 2011 05:23 AM PDT http://ow.ly/6eL0m Article by Gina Passarella, appearing on law.com on the LTN website, via the Legal Intelligencer. This article touches on the fact that sanctions for failing to preserve potentially relevant evidence is the most common reason cited for imposing punishment. The article discusses a specific case, and some other cases that have followed, and an apparent inconsistency in case precedent. As the article states, "The 2010 Southern District of New York case Pension Committee of the Montreal Pension Plan v. Banc of America Securities made clear a written litigation hold notice was required by the attorney as well as a continued monitoring of the client's preservation policies. But other courts have come down since Pension Committee and not required written hold notices. LDiscovery's Leonard Deutchman said a party's duty to preserve begins at the first instance litigation might be expected. Sometimes that is obvious, like when the Deepwater Horizon exploded, there was immediately an expectation that litigation might follow. But it's not always that clear. The duty in an employment discrimination case doesn't begin when the employee files a claim with the EEOC, for example, but as early as when he walks out the day he was fired saying "'you'll hear from my attorney,'" Deutchman said. While the case law has developed on the issue, the federal rules are silent as to a party's preservation obligations at the start of a case, Morgan Lewis & Bockius' Tess Blair said. The biggest burden in e-discovery, she said, is "this broad, ill-defined preservation obligation."" There is an effort to possibly augment the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure again, to clarify the preservation obligations that attach to evidence, and this is also discussed in this article.

ILTA 2011 - That's a Wrap Posted: 27 Aug 2011 09:42 AM PDT http://ow.ly/6ere4 Article by Greg Buckles, an eDiscovery industry expert, posted on the eDiscovery Journal website. This article provides an overview and recap of the recently complete ILTA 2011 conference. As the author states in his article, "Overall, the mood was upbeat and almost everyone I queried has had a record year. Litigation and discovery readiness spending seems to have recovered from the 2008-2009 lull." The author discuses some of the hot topics he overheard at ILTA, and mentions Clearwell's new pricing structure, and kCura's latest predictive coding offering. In addition, he discusses a panel discussion he moderated which touched on the fact that forensic collection of entire drives is often "overkill". The article touches on the fact that there is still uncertainty about the acceptance of some of the newly developed technological solutions. "Most predictive analytics are essentially black box technologies that ask the user to trust complex selection profiles. There is no doubt that we need these technologies to tackle the ever-growing scope of collections, but the panel agreed that the easiest way to mitigate risks was to get the opposing parties agreement on review methods."