1. E-Discovery Principles Applied to WA Public Records Act
(Blog/Blog)

... of documents in native electronic format. In Mechling v. City of Monroe, 2009 WL 3430173 (Div. 1, 2009), Mechling requested that the City of Monroe provide certain email messages in electronic format ...

2. Clawback Agreements in the Wake of FRE 502
(Blog/Blog)

Privilege review of voluminous electronic documents can be extremely costly and time-consuming. As one federal magistrate judge put it, it is one of the most challenging aspects of discovery of electronically ...

3. Non-Latin Text Poses E-Discovery Problem
(Blog/Blog)

... to be searched as well as “jsmith@starbucks.china”? Do contextual searches of translated documents need to be expanded to include concepts relating to “middle kingdom” and China? And this will only get ...

4. Hi ho, Hi ho, Off to Mine for Metadata We Go…
(Blog/Blog)

... altered or updated? Why would an electronic document contain information that’s not readily viewable by the author? Why can’t electronic documents be treated like paper documents?   Despite this ...

5. Preaching: Prompt & Cheap ESI Preservation
(Blog/Blog)

... taken as soon as litigation is likely. It is a truism that ESI not preserved cannot be produced. While it’s reasonable to wait weeks or months to gather paper documents from filing cabinets and store ...

6. Early Case Assessment Is Too Late
(Blog/Blog)

... are the goals, ECA comes much too late. It’s remarkable that it took so many years for the notion of ECA to catch on. In part, this was because during the era of paper documents, litigation holds were ...

7. Big Fish, Little Fish, We’re All in the Same E-Discovery Waters
(Blog/Blog)

... did not enter into a written agreement and that the $500,000 was merely a refundable deposit. During discovery, the plaintiff requested all documents in the McClendons’ possession concerning the painting ...

8. The Trouble with Tweets
(Blog/Blog)

... in a dispute to argue that emails and tweets contradict important documents or testimony. Second, emails and tweets are so common and casual that they often don’t receive careful scrutiny by a receiver. ...

9. Cathy Lopez Bio
(Bios/Bios)

... As a project manager, Ms. Lopez worked closely with clients on large and small projects involving the preservation, collection and production of electronic documents. Ms. Lopez also trained and supported ...

10. The Rising Tide of E-Discovery Specialists
(Blog/Blog)

... a key employee leaves one company and joins another. In one such case, computer forensics helped prove that an employee who left one company stole computer-aided design documents and brought them to a ...

11. Tweets Are Evidence, So Just Deal With It
(Blog/Blog)

... – word processing documents, email, accounting records, payroll, due diligence and environmental studies – the custody and control standard is increasingly blurred in favor of the propounding party. A ...

12. Encryption is the Key
(Blog/Blog)

... of California, attorneys have an obligation to “understand how and where electronic documents, records and emails are maintained and to determine how best to locate, review and produce responsive documents.” ...

13. The Vanishing Point
(Blog/Blog)

... these records aren’t kept beyond eight hours and we are unable to decrypt the information that was transmitted. We acknowledge that these documents may be relevant, but under the safe harbor rule, we shouldn’t ...

14. Concept Searching: What a Concept!
(Blog/Blog)

Recently, the American Bar Association reported that the total number of documents generated each year by individual employees grew by 500 percent between 2000 and 2006. The bar also predicted that same ...

15. Yankee Doodle Dandy: Leave the FRCP Alone
(Blog/Blog)

...  In the United States, we have a more nuanced cost-shifting system. Let’s use what I like to call the discovery continuum as an example. On one end of the spectrum there are discovery documents and testimony ...

16. Washington State Bar Mulls ESI Rule Changes
(Blog/Blog)

...  Charles T. Tsuji is an attorney and electronically stored information consultant at Blank Law + Technology PS. He provides advice to clients to ensure that sources of electronic documents ...

17. Awash in a Sea of Data
(Blog/Blog)

... searching. Blank Law + Technology works on cases where both small and large numbers of documents have to be searched for potentially relevant data. Think of the volume quandary this way: 1 gigabyte of ...

18. E-Discovery Remains Bloated and Abused
(Blog/Blog)

... according to court documents. The plaintiffs claimed that Mayflower had failed to compensate them for overtime pay and had illegally deducted wages from their pay. As often happens in litigation, disputes ...

19. Preserving Old Employee Data is Critical
(Blog/Blog)

... climate, these two documents may be just as important as properly preserving the employee’s electronic data. Charles T. Tsuji is an attorney and electronically stored information consultant ...

20. Put on Notice: The Litigation Hold
(Blog/Blog)

Each day, billions of new emails, word processing documents and spreadsheets are created by organizations large and small. Likewise, vast amounts of electronically stored information (ESI) are destroyed ...