Data discovery has played a key role in US litigation for two generations, during which time nearly all forms of information have migrated to the digital realm. Yet, according to Texas-based trial lawyer and e-discovery expert, Craig Ball, few legal departments are addressing this reality. He says that, despite the central role of electronic information in our lives, e-discovery efforts are either overlooked altogether or pursued in such epic proportions that discovery dethrones the merits as the focal point of the case.
Ball believes that, at each extreme, lawyers must bear some responsibility for the failure. ‘Few have devoted sufficient effort to understanding their clients’ information architecture or mastering tools and techniques to manage data,’ he argues. ‘We didn’t know how good we had it when discovery meant only paper. Paper is tangible. It has to be stored somewhere physically accessible, and systems have developed over time to store and retrieve it. Paper holds power of place, whereas electronic data accumulates invisibly.
‘Even if employees label electronic data accurately, they rarely file it consistently,’ continues Ball. ‘Thousands of emails sit ignored in inboxes; their subject lines offering no clue as to their contents. Documents are saved in cryptically named folders on desktops and portable storage media or replicated between work and home computers. There is still plenty of paper around, too, but filing systems, like filing clerks, have all but disappeared.’
Ball adds that there is a standard misconception that evidence can be retrieved simply by running a Googlelike search across a company’s electronic files. ‘That’s rarely feasible, even in high-tech enterprises,’ he emphasises. Similarly, he is frustrated by the attempts by many lawyers to try to convert e-data into paper form. ‘Such is the volume of electronic information that it would be impossible to convert it all to hard copy,’ he says, ‘and yet lawyers seem to overwhelmingly favour this expensive, inferior path over learning to deal with electronic data differently.’
via Improving legal records management: harness the DNA of data.
