I have been involved with countless IT software development projects whereby many stakeholders (including lawyers) tried to work as a team to deliver a system/software to meet various requirements. I said ‘tried’ instead of ‘must’ or ‘need’ or ‘should’.
In my role as an IT manager or project manager, I will never say to my team ‘we must get along with so and so to build this system’ or ‘we should try to talk to each other’. Who relishes to be ‘told’ or talk to on what to do? Definitely not want that directed at/to me and so why do it to my fellow workmates/colleague? It’s simply counterproductive and easily generate towards an ‘I told you so’ culture which ultimately leads to ‘a blaming culture’. In a blaming culture, creating a meaningful or ‘good stuff’ outcomes gets circuited.
I have recently come across several articles/postings highlighting that ‘IT folks and lawyers are still not talking or failure to co-operate’ in ediscovery activities. This is the posting which got me to blog. BTW, a catchy title ‘Legal and IT Are Still Not Communicating’. The posting ended by stating that ‘Only dialog between legal and IT will change that’. (i.e. the respective responsibilities of legal and IT still are not being carried out by many because they don’t understand them). Understanding starts somewhere and dialog is great if both parties are willing to have a dialog. Even building bridges between IT folks and lawyers have surfaced elsewhere.
Let it be known that it is not that IT folks are not talking to lawyers; it is most likely that ‘the talk’ is directed from lawyers to IT folks. (I am assuming in most organizations, lawyers initiate or announce the litigation hold and other ediscovery requests to the IT department). IT folks are used to receiving requests from other departments (including lawyers). However what is unusual in ediscovery is that most IT folks (unless they are trained on ediscovery terms and have exposure to ediscovery activities or have been fully briefly beforehand by legal staff) will treat the request as an IT request rather than an ediscovery requests. It’s not that ‘we are not talking’, it’s more like ‘what are we talking about?’ and ‘how do we start to get to the ‘same starting page?’. Now, how to get both parties to turn ‘talking’ into meaningful dialogue?
Failure starts when both wants to start building bridges to bridge with each other and failed to recognize that the simplest bridge is defining a raft to get to a bridge. There is always a bridge somewhere already waiting for us, just finding a raft is the first hurdle.
Remember the story of building a bridge? Let’s start by learning to define a raft and not focus on building bridges as there’re already bridges (i.e. ediscovery models, tools/systems) waiting to be used.
Finding willing raft designers from both parties is probably the first hurdle 
No blogging means no internet broadband access at home .
In early April, my internet connection was ‘data-jacked’ by another ISP when they did an upgrade to their system using an ‘old’ or unpurged database/dataset. ‘Old’ as I do not hold a current internet account with them and whatever data they hold about me should have been removed or marked obsolete or inactive.
It took two weeks for my ISP to discover who has my MAC and it took me more than two days to get back my MAC and another week for reconnection. It took several calls and a complaint letter to both ISPs to investigate this incident and was only told yesterday (1st May) about the cause of the incident.
A friend said ‘bad karma’! My astrologist report for April highlighted ‘nothing will run smoothly, take no action, take stock or clean your slate!’ If I did not take any action I will definitely not be blogging this as my internet will definitely be still in ‘data-jacked’ mode.
Oh! I also went mobile internet (3G) and wireless connectivity in an attempt to stay ‘connected’. Looking back, April was certainly ‘a no action month’ as rightly predicted by the astrologist, just my interpretation of ‘action’ to mean ‘must act’!
Maybe I will write up my April action-packed activities revolving around internet data-jacking, data-uploading, mobile and wireless security and my trips to the mobile shops and the local cafe for wifi
So… no blogging, couple of twittering, e-mailed out a meeting report for the BCSWomen Group and wrote my motivation letter for my PhD application.
Better luck for rest of this year..I hope!
Keywords: Digital evidence, digital forensics, data forensics, investigative work, security breaches (& privacy and data breaches?), information assurance and law.
The Association of Digital Forensics Security and Law (ADFSL) fourth annual conference will be held in Burlington, Vermont, USA on May 20-22, 2009.
The conference description has many keywords and touches on a wide variety of topics and fields. Ah! a conference in beautiful Vermont. I have not been there, have seen beautiful pictures. Maybe if investigative work is done in beautiful settings, people may be more inspired naturally to collaborate and work together . Well… the conference organisers noted this : Today, many professionals are working with others from different fields – lawyers are working with IT managers, law enforcement are working with forensics engineers. Well, at least they are trying.
On a different scale, the third International Crime Science Conference will be at the British Library in London on 15th July 2009. Mmm another place I have not been to. Instead of highlighting about professionals trying to work together, ‘gangs and guns’ serve the medium. Perhaps this is the only distinguishable aspects between crime investigation and ediscovery/edisclosure for civil cases. I guess delineating or distinguishing data/computer/digital forensics and digital evidence will be covered by researchers. High drama though occurs in organisations, courts and private rooms.
I was feeling nostalgic listening to Bob Dylan’s music and remembered my times in Zurich (back in the 1997/8) especially the stories and tales about the gold vaults underneath the streets of Zurich!
I wish I can trace my friends and ex-colleagues in Zurich so that we can re-visit and re-craft the tales in the light of recent changes in banking secrecy in Switzerland. According to the recent BBC news: “The Swiss government confirmed that in line with OECD rules, it would now respond to overseas requests for information in cases of suspected tax evasion, and not just tax fraud”. Indeed the secrets are getting out and perhaps the gold vaults will also soon be opened for inspection, if my friends’ stories are indeed real.
I love stories especially when they stretches my imagination or lack of imagination (shock, surprises?!) and touches on my real life experiences. Well..Imaging walking above gold vaults just underneath your feet and at the same time being harassed by youngsters begging for money or small change. ‘Are They A Changing’ too in this non-secretive age or rather in this age of no more small changes in times of depression? I do hope so…
I just opened an e-mail alerting me on ‘10 Steps to Manage E-Discovery Projects’. Ah! Something just don’t change ; more steps and guidelines and this time instructing (‘like it or not’ ?!) lawyers to become project managers. Now that is a mighty call.
Having glanced the 10 Steps, I have only one observation (with lots of other reasons which I will not list here as they’re my secrets) that is – Project managers are not ruled by 10 steps activities nor can the ediscovery activities be codified into neat steps.
Imagine (now this is not lack of imagination) a lawyer (with all due respect) having to obey the code of ethics and work product or privileges stuff and then ‘like it or not’ being called to act as a project manager. Performing and/or switching role does not mean roles and responsibilities are clear or executable. In fact the multi-roles may create more mayhem when what one needs in ediscovery are clear roles and responsibilities. Also, imagine what the IT department will think of the Legal department?! Conflict all round I should think.
So I thank Bob Dylan for the imagination to ‘get real’ (lawyer acting as lawyer and project manager?!) and at the same time to imagine the impossible possible (like the change in banking secrecy).
March 18, 2009 – 12:27 am
I noticed the use of the terms ‘E-Discovery’ and ‘Electronic Disclosure’ and ‘Information Exchange’ for the May Conference in the Hague. See the programme listed at The University of Texas at Austin School of Law.
Yes! E-Discovery and E-Disclosure or Information Exchange or handling electronic data or digital evidence are getting their footprints at the beautiful Peace Palace in the Hague. Thumbs up to the organisers ! I will be going. I have been to the Peace Palace (invited by a lawyer friend who gave a lecture there couple of years ago) and look forward to seeing the place again.
For my own reference, here are some of the topics spread over two days.
- E-Discovery: A Look Behind the Curtain—Tools and Techniques
- The Present and Future of Electronic Disclosure in International Arbitration
- Evolving Principles of Information Exchange:Consensus and Divergence
- Cross-Cultural Problems Involving Exchange of Information
- Privilege and Ethical Obligations Involving Production and Protection of Evidence
- Expert Evidence in International Arbitration:Are Standards Needed?
- Privilege and Ethical Obligations Involving Expert Evidence in International Arbitration: Are Standards Needed?
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Posted in 2009, Arbitral Practice, Arbitration, Britain, European (non UK), Events, Process, US
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Tagged E-Disclosure, E-Discovery, evidence, May 2009, Obligations, Peace Palace, privilege
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I was recently embroiled in a brief debate/discussion/exchange (don’t like the word ‘argument’) on ‘competition and collaboration’ with a couple of lawyers (who are also arbitrators). Although brief, we all agreed that we want to collaborate rather than compete. (The context of the discussion was on availability of work/cases.) Also it’s much nicer to say we want to collaborate rather than compete I then pointed out that without competition, collaboration will not happen or materialise. (I gave the example of sport competition). Do you find lawyers collaborating and not competing with other lawyers? How else will they win if they don’t compete?
Go and ask a lawyer to collaborate and see what kind of respond you get. I have done this couple of times and the responses I have received so far are fearful (non-collaborative) responses. Rather than seek collaboration, I am asked questions which are geared towards providing them with information so that they can compete with me or put me in a less favorable position. I have also been challenged in other non-collaborative ways.
Saying so, I have also met some wonderful people who understand the meaning of collaboration and have acted collaboratively, not just saying they want to collaborate. The word collaboration has become a buzzy word in the world of ediscovery. Buzzy word gets attention! Just yesterday (or was it Friday?) I was invited to collaborate on producing a Glossary on ediscovery. I jumped at the idea as it was something I wanted to do when I first started this blog. More to come on this wonderful collaboration….
For me, sharing information takes more courage than talk of collaboration. On the buzzy use or talk of collaboration, read the article ‘Time to Work Together on Electronic Discovery’ posted by Clearwellsystem. I like the video blog: Information Security and eDiscovery. Why? Mr. Ron Hedges covered confidentiality and privilege which are both non buzzy words but are the hide and seek in ediscovery actions. What is collaboration in ediscovery? Lawyers collaborating with IT people? Is that it?
February 27, 2009 – 4:18 am
Yesterday I searched and located several groups in facebook. Being a spontaneous non-geeky fast typing person I launched and posted several messages to the groups. Damn easy to spot the difference between ‘e-Discovery’ and the ‘eDiscovery Facebook Group’. Not too easy to figure out which group to join, so I joined both & also another ‘Electronic Discovery and Information Management’ group!
Many worlds colliding in facebook judging by the number of groups. Oh imagine if (or when) facebook gets meshed up with Google. Just before these two worlds collide, I’ll leave the facebook warning message to me here for future proofing:
Please Read This!
Warning! Your account could be disabled.
Your behaviour indicates that you may be in violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in your account being disabled. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page.
How cool !
Want to know the heart of the issue in ediscovery? It’s not about the ediscovery rules/laws or about judges. To hear one world view, see the interview conducted by IT Business Edge. Like in facebook, people enjoy creating different world views and the real fun starts when two worlds collide like me and the facebook creator/owner.
I dread to imagine my world when Google and facebook becomes ONE.
February 26, 2009 – 1:42 am
I came across this electronic discovery database and wondered if there is a similar database for non US cases. I will continue to search for non US cases.
For information, the electronic discovery database is maintained by K&L Gates and here’s the blurb:
“Electronic Discovery Case Database K&L Gates maintains and continually updates a database containing over 900 electronic discovery cases collected from state and federal jurisdictions around the United States. This database is searchable by keyword, as well as by any combination of 28 different case attributes, e.g., on-site inspection, allegations of spoliation, motion for a preservation order, etc. Each search will produce a list of relevant cases, including a brief description of the nature and disposition of each case, the electronic evidence involved and a link to a more detailed case summary if available.”