Extract from Betsy Hendrick, Anne Kershaw, Mandi Ross, and Janice Yates’ article “How to Leverage the in Situ Ediscovery Model to Win Proportionality Arguments” published in the ACC Docket – May Edition
With the evolution of technology, documents have proliferated, moving from the file cabinet to the clouds. When litigation occurs, searching these vast troves of data can be overwhelming. The concept of proportionality in litigation requires discovery to be proportional to the needs of the case, and compels the court and the parties to consider how important the information is, how difficult it will be to produce, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit. The courts and litigating parties share the responsibility to employ proportionality to curtail overzealous eDiscovery practices. Thanks to new tools, in-house counsel can quickly and inexpensively retrieve the necessary metrics and win arguments pertaining to proportionality in discovery.
