New Research: In-House Legal Teams Reveal Top Trends in E-Discovery

We're happy to be publishing the results of the 2015 Guidance Software Second Annual E-Discovery Survey.  Responded to by nearly 100 people from in-house legal departments and e-discovery service providers this survey shows some key trends with e-discovery teams, such as:

The ABCs of BYOD to CYA

Chad McManamy

In an effort to reduce the overwhelming cost of staying current on IT hardware for employees, many organizations are considering the alternative approach of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).  Since employees are already bringing their own devices into the workplace and these employees have a passion for using the latest and greatest devices, it follows that organizations should consider a policy to allow the use of these employee-owned devices for corporate purposes.

There exists a major challenge with opening a corporate network to the expansive list of potential devices employees might want to bring to work. That challenge is that the structure and controls the IT department put in place to protect data for employer-owned devices become very difficult to enforce on employee-owned machines. 

CEIC 2013: Leading Judges Speak on TAR and Digital Information in Criminal Prosecutions

Daniel Lim

Many thanks to Judges Vanessa D. Gilmore, (U.S. District Court, S.D. Tex. – Houston Division), David Waxse (U.S. District Court, Kansas), and Karla Spaulding (U.S. District Court, M.D. Fla.) for an engaging and informative panel at the CEIC® 2013 conference in Orlando.

TAR: Holy Grail or Helpful Tool?

Judge Waxse helped to start us off with a discussion of whether experts would be required to testify for the use of new technologies in discovery, such as technology assisted review (TAR).  While Judge Peck has indicated his view that such testimony would NOT be needed because Federal Rule of Evidence applies to trial, rather than discovery, Judge Waxse takes an opposing view.  

Two Best Practices for Addressing BYOD and E-Discovery

The “bring-your-own-device” (BYOD) phenomenon is challenging more than corporate e-discovery teams—it’s creating intense pressure on IT security teams, as well. Your C-suite executives may be showing an unswerving devotion to their iPads or Android smartphones—and who’s going to deny them their favorite mobile devices?

Among the more obvious e-discovery headaches created by the BYOD trend are these:

• Your corporation doesn’t own or physically control the device. So how are you going to get discoverable data from it?
• Most users – no matter how technically proficient – don’t know how to take care of potentially discoverable data to prevent it from being deleted. So how can you ensure collection?
• The location of the data you seek may not be on the device – it may be in the cloud or on a corporate server. Can you pinpoint the location of mobile device data?
• Data formats are often quite different on mobile devices with small form factors than on laptops or desktop computers. Can your IT or e-discovery teams guarantee your ability to find and collect a handwritten note on an iPad?
• New devices are launching monthly. How quickly can mobile application providers provide data security or ensure forensic retrieval of data from those devices?