Extract from Ann Halkett and Monique Sever’s article “CEDS Canadian Certification Launches in Canada” published in the BCPA Paralegal Press
Modern electronic discovery is complex. It really was easier when we dealt with paper! You simply needed to instruct your client to collect the evidence from their filing cabinets and desk. Today, evidence exists in so many different places and a range of formats. There are so many copies of the same document as evidenced by email conversations alone. These challenges add to the complexity and costs in litigation.
As many of you know, eDiscovery is a process that requires you to use specialized software tools to remove duplicates and to filter out the non-relevant evidence to get to the most important evidence in less time at reduced costs for your client. Even if you outsource this work to a vendor, you still need to understand what they will do and how they will do it, and you need to instruct the vendor, all this in order to achieve the end goal. Counsel would never ask a question of a client at trial to which counsel did not already know the answer to, so why would you blindly follow a vendor’s advice? In eDiscovery, it’s what you don’t know that is guaranteed to cause issues in your case and just as guaranteed to cost more money. The CEDS certification provides you with a basis of understanding to help you grasp what the vendor is talking about as well as equip and enable you to properly communicate with your client to obtain what you need to avoid sanctions and additional costs.
Read the full article here (page 16)
