As a former securities litigator, Gabriela Baron recalls the days of document production when she tagged paper documents with different color tape flags, labeled the boxes lining the hallways with sharpie marker, and met trucks in the building’s loading bay, to make sure all those documents and all those boxes got delivered to opposing counsel.
That was in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then, in 2004, she became a general counsel of the electronic discovery provider Amici LLC, which was acquired by Xerox Litigation Services in 2006. These days, she finds herself in meetings with associates who can’t even imagine that’s how discovery got done on massive cases. “They’re like, ‘That’s nuts, you were in the loading bay with the boxes?’,” says Baron, who is now vice president for business development at XLS.
Indeed, a lot’s changed since what Baron calls the “dark ages” of e-discovery—and not just the shift from paper to electronic platforms. “Back then, corporations were the ones most in the dark” about how e-discovery worked, she says. Now, it’s corporate legal departments—not law firms—that evaluate and contract providers. Baron estimates she spends 90 percent of her time interfacing with corporations, and only about 10 percent with law firms.
Are We on the Cusp of Major Changes to E-Discovery Rules? | Law Technology News (Kelston)
By this time next year, we may be on the cusp of another major set of amendments to the discovery provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The United States Courts’ Advisory Committee on Civil Rules voted last week to send a slate of proposed amendments up the rulemaking chain, to its Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, with a recommendation that the proposals be approved for publication and public comment later this year.
The most significant — and controversial — of the proposals would narrow the scope of discovery under Rule 26; impose or reduce numerical limits on written discovery and depositions under Rules 30, 31, 33 and 36; and, in Rule 37, adopt a uniform set of guidelines concerning the imposition of sanctions when a party fails to preserve discoverable information. Proposed amendments to Rule 34 would tighten the rules governing responses to requests for production of documents.
via Are We on the Cusp of Major Changes to E-Discovery Rules?.
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