Notable Articles in E-Discovery 4/17/13

Emails Form Valid, Staute Of Frauds-Friendly, Real-Estate Option Contract (it - Lex)

"Email correspondences are no longer just means of communicating with friends; they have become tools for binding legal contracts. We’ve talked in the past about how the elementary concepts of offer and acceptance can be unclear when it comes to email, and a recent Texas case explored the topic further."

Is predictive coding the answer to reducing the costs of eDisclosure? (The Lawyer)

"Dr James Kent, Global Head of Investigations and CEO EMEA, Nuix, believes predictive coding must be combined with other technologies and investigative workflows to address the runaway costs of legal review.

In the age of big data, organisations facing litigation, regulatory disputes and audits are spending too much time and money on data discovery processes. Quite simply, organisations must deal with more information created and stored in more places. Paper documents make the occasional appearance, but the critical evidence is most often found in electronic documents, email, instant messages, text messages or even blogs or social media."

Note to Counsel: Exhaust “Alternative Measures” to Restrict E-Discovery Parameters (Mike Hamilton, E-Discovery Beat)

"E-Discovery forms the basis for how parties develop and prepare for a case. If the scope or parameters of e-discovery narrows or expands, the playing field changes. Legal arguments transform, and the strength of a party’s claim or defense can shrink or grow. Lawyers are comparable to chefs in this aspect. For a chef, having access to less or more ingredients, greatly affects what can be made. The same can be said for lawyers, the amount of information to draw from in e-discovery affects what strategies and arguments can be constructed."

Project Management: The Human Hand That Guides E-Discovery (Andy Mower, Law Technology News)

"No matter what software is selected, a system or application cannot function without human guidance. Technology only yields accurate results when managed by a project manager who has previous ESI project-management experience, solid cross-organizational knowledge and communication skills, high technical acumen, understanding of all products and services, creativity and even context to the general legal strategies being deployed. These attributes allow an experienced litigation support practitioner to utilize the features and functions of the technology to tackle workflow challenges and support custom client requests.

Seasoned project managers understand the strengths, limitations and the very backbone of their systems and applications that allows them to succeed with their responsibilities and, in turn, deliver tremendous client satisfaction. While their roles require them to delegate tasks to technical staff, experienced project managers always oversee the technical process with much attention to detail by applying their practical experience to establish quality control measures to troubleshoot for any inconsistencies or potential errors resulting in the processed data."