A treasure trove of discoverable information

Attorneys making discovery requests in litigation now have to consider whether and to what extent they will seek information from social networking pages.

There are two ways to get information from social networking sites. The first is to search for it directly and see how much information can be obtained without resorting to an ethics-violating friending subterfuge. There’s nothing wrong with obtaining information that is publicly available; if an adverse party, witness or custodian of data exposes elements of his or her personal universe for any and all to see on a social networking site, it is fair game.

The second way is by discovery request, interrogatory or deposition. If an individual has been identified as one of the key custodians of information in a corporate party to litigation, and that person’s corporate e-mail is being produced, it should by now be standard to inquire if he or she used other personal e-mail services (gの.  Gmail, Hotmailの, ヤフー ) to communicate on business-related matters relevant to your litigation. This has to be taken even further now: Does this person have a social networking page, and if so, has this person communicated with anyone on the subject matter of this litigation using the messaging system within that site, and if so, please produce those messages.

Sometime in the not too distant future, litigation hold notices will include social networking pages.

を介して 敵味方? ソーシャルネットワーキングとEディスカバリ.