Extract from Tim Rollins’s article “3 Important Lessons from E-Discovery Case Law from Fall 2023”
E-Discovery case law rulings are issued seemingly every day, and all of them probably contain lessons that professionals working in the field should pay attention to. They provide legal teams with valuable insights, guidance, and precedent that are essential for effective and compliant electronic discovery processes.
Case law rulings establish legal precedent, serving as a reference point for similar cases in the future. They provide insights into best practices for handling electronic evidence, so you can learn from others’ successes–and failures. By staying informed about e-discovery case law, legal teams can better navigate potential pitfalls and reduce the risk of sanctions or adverse rulings.
While keeping abreast of these rulings is a key aspect of maintaining legal proficiency in an increasingly digital and data-driven legal landscape, it can be difficult to sort out the important and relevant rulings from those that aren’t. That’s one reason why Exterro established the E-Discovery Case Law Project–to identify and share key lessons from important case law rulings. Looking back over the past few months, here are some highlights worth keeping in mind.
Be Careful How You Process ESI for E-Discovery Production
In Hoehl Family Foundation v. Roberts, Defendants’ efforts to get their files organized in preparation for production turned into an issue for them, as it end up stripping out key metadata that should have been attached to each file. Plaintiffs moved to compel the production of the documents in the native format–an error that could have been avoided by understanding and using standard e-discovery technology. As Hon. Andrew Peck points out in his analysis of the case, “Metadata is important to e-discovery. Be careful that employee collection, such as in moving ESI to forward it to counsel, does not inadvertently strip metadata. And as we are seeing more and more in the case law, courts will hold parties to what they agreed to do in an ESI a protocol— here, to produce ESI with its metadata. Be careful that you can do what you agree to do.”
