Author Archives: Daryl Shetterly
The Importance of People and Process in Electronic Discovery
Whenever I hear people lamenting the many ways eDiscovery has ruined their day or their week, I try to dig a bit deeper and get to the root of the problem. Is the problem really an eDiscovery problem or is it a failure by the organization or law firm to properly plan and prepare for the inevitability of complying with eDiscovery obligations? More often than not the “eDiscovery problem” is really a communication problem, a planning problem or a failure to get the right people involved until it is too late to complete the task without Herculean effort that is …
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Trying to Teach a Rhino to Dance
The legal profession in general has been frustratingly slow to embrace both technology and project management in managing litigation. We don’t have that luxury in the eDiscovery world. As a lawyer whose practice is focused on managing complex electronic discovery projects, I have spent lots of time developing project plans that integrate technology and process to reduce cost and increase the quality of eDiscovery work (identification, preservation, collection, early case assessment, data processing, data filtering, document review and production).
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Don’t Overlook the Document Review Guidelines
Ever lead a team of people and feel as if you were herding cats? Each person on the team has their own concept of what needs to be done and the best method to accomplish the task? Without proper leadership, this team will have little to show for their hard effort at the end of the day because everyone is headed a different direction. Having spent many years managing electronic discovery projects as eDiscovery counsel, including managing the document review work, I know the importance of keeping everyone on the same page. In the context of a large document review …
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Getting the Most From the Custodian Interview
Interviewing key custodians is a crucial phase of the eDiscovery lifecycle. Information gathered during this phase helps you identify the distribution of relevant documents in the corporation and gives you valuable information as you continue to identify relevant documents – as well as aids in privilege review, deposition preparation and trial preparation. It is important that custodian interviews are properly documented for defensibility purposes. To aid in documentation and to ensure consistency across interviews, our teams often develop an interview form that allows the interviewer to type the answers directly into the document during the interview. The questions asked during …
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Have You Hugged a Contract Attorney Lately?
This scenario unfolds every day: your company receives a request for production of documents. There are millions of files that are potentially relevant. You work with IT and your eDiscovery counsel to identify, collect and defensibly filter the data set down to exclude irrelevant documents. You use technology assisted review tools, e.g. clustering or predictive coding, to find the documents that are most likely to be relevant. Now you have your data set down to 250,000 documents and you are ready to produce them, right? Probably not. Certainly you need someone to review a statistical sample of the documents for …
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Self Collection: Is It Defensible?
I have received a lot of questions recently regarding whether it is defensible for a corporation to allow its employees to self collect relevant documents for litigation. Self collection refers to a collection process where in-house or outside counsel articulates to each employee (“custodian” of records) the scope of relevance and that custodian takes on the task of identifying any documents they may have that are potentially responsive and isolates them for use in the litigation. Though self collection continues to be popular as a collection methodology, some argue it is not defensible and that collection should instead be completed using technology …
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e-Discovery Standards: Too Soon?
Is it time for a standardized format for eDiscovery document productions? In a recent article for Law Technology News, E-Discovery Technical Standard at Crossroads (available here), I had the opportunity to speak with Evan Koblentz and share my insight on this issue. Tweet
ESI Data Processing: Why Should Attorneys Care?
This article won the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week. LitigationWorld is a free weekly email newsletter that provides helpful tips regarding electronic discovery, litigation strategy, and litigation technology. Of the concepts guaranteed to glaze the eyes of the most attentive, “data processing” is certainly near the top of the list. Even attorneys that managed to stay awake through such law school gems as Secured Transactions and Estate Planning may struggle with data processing. Part of the problem is, at first blush, data processing appears more technical than legal. The prevalence of this myth is unfortunate and the risks to attorneys …
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The World Is Flat: Handling Foreign Language Documents in eDiscovery Projects
Early in my eDiscovery career I learned the unanticipated presence of foreign language documents can throw a project budget and timeline for a loop. We were on budget and ahead of schedule when . . . BAM! Lots of Asian language documents! The English speaking team I had so carefully built and trained was suddenly unable to complete the task. What to do? The world is flatter now. Anecdotally, we encounter an even higher volume of foreign language documents today as we help our clients comply with their eDiscovery obligations. Foreign language documents introduce an additional layer of complexity and …
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Smaller Companies Get Sued Too
If you read the financial press you have seen companies use software that converts a picture of you at present day to a picture of you at retirement age in hopes of motivating you to buy stocks and mutual funds. They are reminding us that we should start planning for retirement now. When you are young, seeing your 65 year old self staring back at you from the computer screen is certainly a motivating experience! This is a neat gimmick and it gave me an idea for a tool on our web site. You upload your financial statements and the …
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Thursday, May 24, 2012
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