Extract from Justin Smith’s article “Treating Hyperlinked Files as Modern Attachments”
In today’s digital age, where data flows freely across the internet, the legal and technological landscapes are perpetually intertwined. One area where this interconnection is particularly pronounced is in the realm of ediscovery. As legal professionals, it’s imperative to understand how modern technologies fit into the traditional legal frameworks.
Treating hyperlinked files and hyperlinked documents as modern attachments is a hot topic in the world of ediscovery, especially after Google changed permissions to make it so that admins in Google Vault could export hyperlinked Google Drive content, such as Google Docs, from Gmail messages, and Microsoft did the same for Purview ediscovery members with what they call cloud attachments on their OneDrive platform. It has the potential to change document retention policies and how organizations respond to future litigation.
Law firms, corporations, and governments are leveraging ediscovery technology like this in different aspects of their workflows, beyond just responding to litigation. Having a software provider that is able to export these hyperlinked documents and files is fast becoming part of established ediscovery best practices.
