Wall Street & Technology: Blog: E-Discovery: 100 Days and Counting

E-Discovery: 100 Days and Counting

This past weekend, we passed a milestone -- 100 days since the enacting of the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as they relate to eDiscovery. In summary, those Rules attempt to give courts guidance for how to treat digital data and information, in whatever form and context it is in.

The Rules try to contain the ever escalating costs that plaintiffs and defendants. So spreadsheets, letters, contracts, e-mails and all of those files that are stored on disk and on tape, on and off the network can, should, and must be “discoverable” to all of the parties engaged in litigation.

So, after 100 days, how are the Rules standing up.

That’s what we’ll be talking about here.

We know a few things; 1) Congress makes the laws (Rules), Courts interpret the Rules. In other words, Courts will have a significant say in what these rules ultimately mean, and how they change over time. 2) In those 100 days, tera-bytes of new information have been created. 3) Finally, in those 100 days, thousands of new lawsuits have been filed, any one of which may be a major of milestone in the development of this body of the law. 4) States will start to play in this realm –- administratively, legislatively and judicially –- and this will effect the Rules also.

And the impact on enterprise technology –- more options, more cost, more liability. But also, more solutions and an opportunity to better get a handle on your assets and infrastructure. Stay tuned.

Michael Sears is the principal advisor on eDiscovery at Mathon Systems. He is a member of the California Bar Association, and a frequent commentator at the nexus of the law, business and technology. Prior to Mathon, he founded a digital media company, was a senior executive with several public companies, and served on the boards of directors of both public and private technology companies. Michael holds both a Juris Doctorate and an MBA from Stanford University.

Posted by Greg MacSweeney at 03:12 PM

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