Communication Is the Key to Avoiding e-Discovery Pitfalls
As the volume of documents stored electronically continues to grow (without apparent limit), electronic discovery (“e-discovery”) has created new challenges for litigants. The time during which the discovery stage of litigation was dominated by manual or paper production is over. In fact, “99.9 percent of information created is created digitally. . . . More than 70% of that information is never printed.”[1] Courts and litigants have struggled to deal with these challenges, and the solutions (not to mention the “rules of the game”) are still evolving. This much, however, is certain – litigants’ vulnerability to time-consuming, distracting, and costly e-discovery disputes, and the discovery of damaging evidence, will increase. Minimizing those vulnerabilities by means of education, planning, and communication will be in everyone’s best interest.