Extract from Doug Austin’s article “State and Local Government Agencies Are Often Forgotten, But They Have Needs Too”
When people write about organizations that have a need for eDiscovery solutions, we think of law firms, corporations, service providers and government agencies. But when people write about government agencies and their eDiscovery needs, the discussion almost always turns to Federal government agencies.
State and Local government agencies aren’t written about often, but there are a huge number of those agencies across the country, and they have eDiscovery needs just as much as any other organization. Here’s a look at some of the eDiscovery considerations for state and local government agencies and they compare to those for Federal government agencies.
State eDiscovery Rules
One of the biggest differences for state and local government agencies are the rules that govern discovery for them. Most cases involving those agencies are conducted and tried in state courts, meaning they are subject to state rules for discovery instead of Federal rules. This means that the rules are a little different in each state, though most states’ eDiscovery rules for civil procedure are patterned after the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
However, some state eDiscovery rules even predate the 2006 amendments to the Federal rules for eDiscovery. For example, my state (Texas) enacted Tex. R. Civ. P. 196.4 in 1999 to address the production of “data that exists in electronic or magnetic form.” You can tell an eDiscovery rule is old when it refers to “magnetic” data!
