Did We Really Need Ediscovery Procedural Rules?
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. - Carl Jung
Three years later - did we really need to amend the federal rules for ediscovery? On December 1st, 2006, changes relating to “electronically stored information” (ESI) in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure took effect. The changes to Rules 16, 26, 33, 34, 37, and 45 provide mandates to the preservation, discoverability, production, accessibility, and costs associated with ESI which includes e-mail, word processing documents, spreadsheets, voice mail, databases and more.
Over the last 18 years I have been writing on how to apply technology applications to the practice of law and eight years ago I began my initial research of court cases and procedural rules focusing on discovery of electronic information. During that time the amended ediscovery federal rules were being proposed and hearings held across the country to determine whether the procedural rules should be changed to adapt to the digital world. I remember sitting through a proposed amendment discussion at Fordham University thinking “what technology has wrought – technology will solve.” In fact, during all my presentations over the last several years, this has been one of my closing comments. (Read more . . . )
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