Extract from Cassandre Coyer’s article “E-Discovery Masters Conference Takeaways: ESI Protocols, Linked Files and More”
In the last five years or so, some e-discovery attorneys say they have been under growing pressure to sign ESI protocols, agreements between parties guiding how electronically stored information will be preserved, collected, processed and produced during discovery.
Though they’re actually not found in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), these voluntary agreements are creating new compliance headaches for parties, at times due to their overly-granular nature or their lack of flexibility.
For some e-discovery experts, the key to adequate protocols lies in the language used, what to include and, more importantly, what to leave out. Below are some of the takeaways from e-discovery panelists at the Masters Conference in Washington, D.C., on April 17, who explored what protocols should look like when dealing with emerging technologies and new sources of data.
Linked Files: ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil’
Hyperlinking is probably one of today’s most controversial data sources in e-discovery. For one, in the age of collaborative documents, links are often broken, leading to outdated, if not entirely new versions of documents, making them particularly difficult to preserve and present.
