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 system. Our e-Discovery Analysis and Technology group is continuing a series of Q&A videos to mark the occasion. In this episode, Julie Anne Halter, Carolyn Austin, and Krysta Slavik discuss artificial intelligence and e-discovery.
Read MoreThe 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.
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 More
Congratulations to our very own Julie Anne Halter and Thomas J. Smith, the co-chairs of our e-Discovery Analysis & Techology (“e-DAT”) practice group, and two of more than 270 K&L Gates lawyers named among the 2023 Best Lawyers in America®!
Please see our firm announcement regarding these rankings, as well as our LinkedIn post for more information.
We are pleased to announce that the Electronic Discovery Law blog has been nominated to participate in The Expert Institute’s Best Legal Blog Contest in the AmLaw category. Thanks to those who nominated us and to all of our readers and subscribers (sign up today!) for their ongoing interest in our blog. Voting is now open and runs through 12:00 AM on November 3rd. If you have appreciated our blog over the years, we would appreciate your vote! CLICK HERE to cast your vote for the Electronic Discovery Law blog.
Dear Readers,
It is our pleasure to provide you with regular summaries of important and interesting e-Discovery opinions and other e-Discovery resources. We hope you enjoy them. If you do, please consider nominating us for the ABA Journal’s Web 100 – a celebration of the “best of the legal industry on the web.” Nominations are due no later than 11:50 p.m. CT on Sunday, July 30, 2017 and can be made by filling out the nomination form, available here.
Thanks for your interest in our blog!
Sincerely,
The K&L Gates Electronic Discovery Law Blog Team
A three-year pilot project studying “whether requiring parties in civil cases to respond to a series of standard discovery requests before undertaking other discovery will reduce the cost and delay of civil litigation” is now underway in the District of Arizona and the Northern District of Illinois. All civil cases in these jurisdictions, except those exempted by the program’s Standing Order, will be subject to the provisions of the program.
Formal Opinion 749
In February, the NY County Lawyers Association Professional Ethics Committee issued Formal Opinion 749, addressing “[a] lawyer’s ethical duty of technological competence with respect to the duty to protect a client’s confidential information from cybersecurity risk and handling e-discovery when representing clients in a litigation or government investigation.” The committee summarized its detailed analysis as follows:
The Sedona Conference has published revisions to its foundational Sedona Principles, The Sedona Principles, Third Edition: Best Practices, Recommendations & Principles for Addressing Electronic Document Production. As stated in the preface, the Third Edition was “necessitated by an even greater explosion in the volume and diversity of forms of electronically stored information, the constant evolution of technology applied to eDiscovery, and by further amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure” as well as by many years of experience in e-discovery. Thus, “[t]he Third Edition has been thoroughly updated to take into account evolving views on electronic discovery over the past decade, based upon the collective experiences of the WG1 membership in facing the myriad of practical issues that are influencing the development of the law in this area, the numerous important court decisions across the country, and, of course, the 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules [of] Civil Procedure.”
Interested parties are invited to “join the dialogue and expand the consensus” around the revised principles and may provide comments to the drafting committee until June 30, 2017.
The Sedona Principles, Third Edition is available for download, here.
It seems that predictive coding may be catching on in the UK. Not long ago, the English High Court approved the use of predictive coding for the first time in Pyrrho Investments Ltd v MWB Property Ltd [2016] EWHC 256 (Ch). In that case, the parties agreed to the use of predictive coding software and merely sought approval from the court. Now, The Lawyer (registration required) reports that the High Court has once again weighed in on the issue, this time to approve the use of predictive coding despite the apparent objection of at least one party. This is the first time such an order has been granted. While the details of the order and underlying disagreement have yet to be revealed, the result bodes well for parties seeking to rely on such technology in future.
Stay tuned to this space for more information as it becomes available.
Copyright © 2022, K&L Gates LLP. All Rights Reserved.