The evolving face of eDiscovery
At Messaging Architects, we’re in a position to see trends in how organizations deal with email. We have thousands of clients representing millions of end users, all of whom rely on email in their day-to-day work life. It’s a pretty good representation of the population as a whole since email has become the primary method of communication for business. One of the biggest and fastest moving trends in the last few years has been the need for organizations to handle eDiscovery.
So what’s eDiscovery? Well, eDiscovery or “Electronic Discovery” is just that – the act of discovery of electronic information. And what qualifies as electronic information? That was pretty much answered by the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2006 when it approved the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The amendments basically outlined that all Electronic Stored Information (ESI) is deemed discoverable and needs to be easily accessible.
There were some big cases before 2006 that highlighted need for electronic discovery, most notably Zubulake v. UBS Warburg. In this landmark case, USB Warburg wound up paying $29.3 million in damages because it could not produce email evidence. A key factor in the decision: The jury was instructed to assume that any email USB discarded after Zubulake filed her complaint would have hurt the bank’s case. The updates to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, however, were what what really got people to take eDiscovery seriously because Electronic Stored Information is so pervasive.
What’s the largest source of ESI at any company? What is the number-one ESI requested by opposing parties during eDiscovery? Email. Email — the preferred way to communicate in the 21st century — is ESI. More often than not, if your company gets sued or is under investigation, your corporate email needs to be discoverable. As a result, eDiscovery has grown from being a "nice to have" feature to becoming the main driver for organizations looking to deploy an archiving solution. Fast forward a few years from 2006 and eDiscovery has matured; organizations such as EDRM are leading the way in formalizing the eDiscovery process and getting a large group of legal firms and technology vendors together.
Over the course of the next few blogs, I’ll be talking about eDiscovery in a bit more depth. I’ll take a look at how our products can help facilitate eDiscovery, but also why it’s important to understand the policy and legal reasons behind the technology.
– Ranjit Sarai
