Seventh Circuit Issues Report on Phase One of Electronic Discovery Pilot Program

Last month, the Seventh Circuit’s Electronic Discovery Pilot Program Committee released its report on phase one of its Electronic Discovery Pilot Program.  Initiated as a “multi-year, multi-phase process to develop, implement, evaluate, and improve pretrial litigation procedures that would provide fairness and justice to all parties while seeking to reduce the cost and burden of electronic discovery consistent with Rule 1 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure”, the first phase of the program ended on May 1, 2010, after a seven month period in which the committee’s Principles Relating to the Discovery of Electronically Stored Information were tested in practice.  Although limited in its geographic scope and number of participants, the results of phase one provide valuable insight into possible ways to better the current civil system.  The second of three phases will begin on July 1, 2010 and may be expanded to increase the number of cases and participating judges.

Too lengthy to summarize, the full report is available here.