E-discovery: a good overview and some helpful links for contract attorneys

A large number of Posse List members have asked for links that provide an “overview” of  the e-discovery process, with the two most common questions being “what are the methods used in e-discovery?”  and “where do we start?”  As more and more Posse List members are employed on the ESI processing side and less on the document review side, we’ve been expanding our e-discovery coverage a bit.

The best place to start is a new “Orange Paper”  provided to us by Orange Technologies.  Yes, it’s a bit of self-promotion (no fee to The Posse List) but it gives you a great overview of the approaches to the conduct of the core electronic discovery tasks:  analytics, processing, and review.  As the Orange paper states, it is all a balance of time, risk, and cost in the conduct of electronic discovery.   

With this balance in mind, this new Orange Paper provides an overview of three approaches to electronic discovery and how each of these approaches affects the time, risk, and cost of the conduct of electronic discovery. The three approaches to electronic discovery addressed in this paper include:

Traditional Method #1 – Processing All Data to TIFF or Native for Full Linear Review
Traditional Method #2 – Indexing, Culling, and Processing Data for Native Review
Advanced Method – Indexing, Culling, 1st Pass Reviewing, and Processing Data for Review

For the full paper click here.       

There are hundreds (thousands?) of articles and links to learn about e-discovery.  We have provided below several links which we think are good “overview” articles and which will put you into great websites and blogs to learn more.  Just click on the highlighted title to access the article:

What game does an e-discovery team play?

This  article comes from Ralph Losey and his e-Discovery Team website which we have quoted numerous times in the past.  Losey is considered “The Guru Of All Things E-Discovery” and his site should be your first stop to learn about e-discovery.

The Sedona Conference:  Electronic Document Retention and Production

The Sedona Conference and its myriad working groups publish definitive texts on e-discovery and are constantly quoted and referenced by the courts and e-discovery experts.  You can connect to the home page by clicking here.

Managing Discovery of Electronic Information: A Pocket Guide for Judges

From the Federal Judicial Center website, the guide covers issues unique to the discovery of ESI, including its scope, the allocation of costs, the form of production, the waiver of privilege and work-product protection, and the preservation of data and spoliation. 

Discovery Production Workflow: Lessons from Magistrate Judges Facciola & Grimm

From the Bowtie Law Blog, this article discusses the workflow in a document review and the roles played by various parties in the process.

Bringing E-discovery in-house 

This article comes from Socha Consulting website, another AAA source on e-discovery.  The referenced article discusses the issues involved in structuring in-house e-discovery operations and will be helpful for Posse List members working for EDDs setting up in-house operations, as well as those of you seeking work with corporations and/or EDDs building these operations. 

Featured Vendor Software:  CaseCentral Review

Gabe Acevedo runs Gabe’s Guide and (among about 8 zillion other topics) he covers every e-discovery vendor, pundit, analysis out there.  We’ve just highlighted is CaseCentral review (and the very funny CaseCentral cartoon series).

E-Discovery Summits/Webinars

Another good site is EDD Blog Online which is run by Jeffery Fehrman and Bob Krantz.  In addition to coverage of summits and webinars, they cover computer forensics, electronic discovery, email archiving, online review and management.

And yes, we have only scratched the surface.  There are many, many more sites and articles.  In cooperation with Orange Technologies we will continue to post every week our “Top 10 Electronic Discovery Updates” to keep you abreast of pertinent articles across the e-discovery landscape.  You can access previous “Top 10” lists by clicking here as well as our previous postings on e-discovery issues.