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29 June 2012

Managing Discovery of Electronic Information: A Pocket Guide for Judges


To: cyberia-l[at]googlegroups.com [A legal affairs list]
Subject: [Cyberia] Interesting publication on discovery of electronic information
From: wes_morgan[at]us.ibm.com
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 10:52:03 -0400
List-Archive: <http://groups.google.com/group/cyberia-l?hl=en_US>

I had the opportunity to visit the Administrative Office of the US Courts, and I ran across a rack of publications outside their cafeteria. As it turns out, the Federal Judicial Center publishes a huge variety of handbooks and guides, many of which are available for download as PDF files. You can browse the library at <http://www.fjc.gov/library/fjc_catalog.nsf/>.

I picked up a copy of "Managing Discovery of Electronic Information: A Pocket Guide for Judges"; while I am neither attorney nor judge, I found it interesting in terms of how various technologies are considered in the context of the discovery process. For instance, the Seventh Circuit apparently has a standing order that names the following electronic data "not reasonably accessible" for the purpose of discovery proceedings:

---quote--

(1) deleted, slack, fragmented, or unallocated data on hard drives;

(2) random access memory (RAM) or other ephemeral data;

(3) on-line access data such as temporary internet files, history, cache, cookies, etc.;

(4) data in metadata fields that are frequently updated automatically, such as last-opened dates;

(5) backup data that is substantially duplicative of data that is more accessible elsewhere; and

(6) other forms of ESI whose preservation requires extraordinary affirmative measures that are not utilized in the ordinary course of business.

--end quote--

You can grab this particular document from <http://1.usa.gov/LJg6tS>.