Happy New Year 2023!
The K&L Gates e-DAT Group send its best wishes to all for an amazing New Year!
LexisNexis Practice Note – “E-discovery: Planning for and Conducting E-discovery (WA)”
Focusing on procedural rules and case law particular to Washington, Julie Anne Halter (Partner and e-DAT Practice Group Co-Chair) and Bree Kelly (e-DAT Senior Staff Lawyer) provide practical guidance for the state’s legal practitioners on each step of the e-discovery process in their recent LexisNexis Practice Note.
Read More425 Business Article – “Collaboration Conundrum: Casual Connectivity Can Create Legal Risks”
Reflecting on the new enterprise collaboration and remote work technologies adopted by many employers, Julie Anne Halter (Partner and e-DAT Practice Group Co-Chair) outlines a number of related legal consideration and risks associated with these technologies in a 425 Business article published this week.
Read MoreChildren’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998: Protection for the US’s Youngest Data Subjects
A number of recent state regulations address privacy rights for consumers of all ages, but there is no equivalent federal law protecting all consumer’s privacy rights. That being said, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA,” at 15 U.S. Code §6501 et seq.) provides some federal protection for data subjects under 13 years of age. This act requires the operator of a “website or online service directed to children” to provide notice on the website regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of a child’s personal information and to obtain “verifiable parental consent” for the noticed collection, use, and disclosure, with some exemptions. Parents have the right to request a description of the types of personal information collected, to revoke consent (including the operators’ use and maintenance of already collected data in addition to termination of future collection), and to obtain the personal information collected from their child(ren). By the same token, a website operator may terminate provision of services to a child when the parent has revoked consent for the use, maintenance, and/or further collection of personal information from the child. Additionally, website operators are prohibited from offering a prize for, or requiring a child to provide, additional personal information in order to participate in a game or activity. Under 15 U.S. Code §6504, the Attorney General of any US state may bring civil action for violations of 15 U.S. Code §6502(b) as parens patriae on behalf of the residents of that state.
Read MoreCelebrating e-Discovery Day: e-Discovery Exchange with Ellen Blanchard
Today we celebrate World e-Discovery Day, an annual industry-wide event for lawyers and legal professionals to highlight the critical role e-discovery plays in our legal systems. To mark this occasion, the K&L Gates e-Discovery Analysis & Technology (“e-DAT”) Group is launching a series of Q&A videos with e-discovery industry veterans. In the first episode in this “e-Discovery Exchange” series, Ellen Blanchard and Julie Anne Halter explore the evolving nature of communication technologies in the hybrid and remote workplaces and their e-discovery implications.
Welcome Back to Ediscoverylaw.com!
The K&L Gates e-Discovery Analysis & Technology (“e-DAT”) Group has spent the last few weeks adding additional content and making a number of revisions and updates to our ediscoverylaw.com website. You’ll see that this website now relies on a blog format, which still allows for identifying particular e-discovery case summaries through keyword searches and category tags. With these changes, we expect that the ediscoverylaw.com website will continue to be a resource and discussion forum for issues related to electronic discovery for years to come.
First Pittsburgh “Under the Wire” CLE Seminar Features Presentation on E-Discovery “Hot Topics”
The Pittsburgh office of K&L Gates recently hosted its first “Under the Wire” CLE seminar on November 15th, 2022. The CLE seminar was the first of a new series of in-person CLE events hosted at the K&L Gates Pittsburgh office.
At the inaugural seminar, Daniel Miller (a partner in our e-Discovery Analysis & Technology (“e-DAT”) practice group) and Laura Veith (an associate focusing on commercial litigation) presented on a number of e-discovery “hot topics.” The presentation emphasized how record preservation and collection efforts must adapt in light of clients’ increasing use of new technologies, including mobile devices and applications present on those devices, ephemeral messaging, and enterprise collaboration platforms, such as Microsoft Teams and Slack.
Attorney Mindfulness When Addressing Emails and Texts: ABA Formal Opinion Provides Ethical Guidance to Lawyers on Electronic Communications
In their roles as advisors, advocates, counselors, negotiators, and client representatives, lawyers communicate extensively though electronic means, particularly email and increasingly text messages. However, the fact that use of these electronic communication tools is commonplace in legal practice doesn’t mean that attorneys shouldn’t exercise caution when crafting their communications. The American Bar Association (“ABA”) Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility published a formal opinion this month that advises lawyers to refrain generally from including their clients on emails and texts sent to opposing counsel.
Read MoreIn re Grand Jury: Supreme Court to Consider Attorney-Client Privilege in “Dual-Purpose Communications”
Because of the volumes of information and the complexities of data found in many cases that require extensive electronic discovery, issues related to attorney-client privilege can require significant attention during the document search, review, and production processes for these cases. Addressing attorney-client privilege requires particular nuance when considering “dual-purpose communications,” in which both legal advice and business guidance are discussed. By granting certiorari to hear arguments on In re Grand Jury, 23 F. 4th 1088 (9th Cir. 2022), the US Supreme Court will consider soon a split among federal judicial circuits regarding the test to use when assessing whether attorney-client privilege applies with regard to such “dual-purpose communications.”
Read MoreElectronic Discovery Institute Article – “The New e-Discovery Wild West: Slack, Teams, Zoom, and Other Collaboration Technologies”
The pandemic has spawned many new and exciting innovations, but many of those innovations have also created new risks. One such risk — and often a very material one — is that employees working at home have created a new “Wild West” of e-discovery and data storage, where pandemic pioneers working in their homestead offices may have inadvertently escaped the well-controlled data storage environment in place in their workplace.
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