Hot off the e-mail Press!

June 13, 2008 – 8:28 pm

I received an invite today to register for the 2nd annual electronic evidence and e-discovery forum.

I attended the 1st Forum last year and the focus then was mostly related to forensic stuff and presentations from top notch e-discovery vendors offering solutions/services based on the edrm.

Judging by the agenda, a mixed bag of themes and topics are planned for Oct 2008.

Heh! Incidents, investigations, readiness all sounds like fun to me. However I doubt if any of the technical and legal presentations will be fun.

Maybe the organiser will prove me wrong and comes up with 2 days packed with fun learning.

Anyhow, the listed agenda:

  • Provide a wealth of practical information and examples of best practice on building proactive capabilities for disclosure and discovery requests
  • Explain how best to contain costs while ensuring a high degree of forensic and litigation readiness
  • Investigate how to strike the perfect balance when deploying in-house capabilities and using the services of external service suppliers 
  • Detail what the perfect e-discovery crisis response team should look like, which departments should be involved internally, and explain how to ensure your organisation can react quickly and cost-efficiently 
  • Highlight pitfalls to watch out for, and give pointers on how to overcome unexpected problems and hurdles that organisations can encounter during events and incidents
  • Offer an opportunity to ensure that your policies are up-to-date with those of your competitors and peers
  • Ensure you are aware of the issues you may encounter if you face a forensic or litigation engagement and are not prepared

Key themes and scenarios for 2008 include:

  • Internally generated events
    > Fraud and theft
    > Investigations into employee activity
    > Employee disputes
    > Whistle blowing
  • Compliance issues
    > Investigation by the government or regulatory body
    > Data privacy when discovering data in different jurisdictions
  • Information leakage
    > Insiders divulging information (e.g. about mergers and acquisitions)
    > Espionage
By | Posted in 2008, Community, Digital Forensics, Events, Technology, Tools | Comments (0)

Changing British Standards & other initiatives

June 2, 2008 – 10:37 am

The existing British Standard Institute, BIP 0008 code of practice for “legal admissibility and evidential weight of information stored electronically” is due to be redesigned in September 2008. The new standard, BS 10008 entitled “Evidential Weight and Legal Admissibility of Electronic Information” is currently on the BSI website for comment.

According to the draft, the model is based on ‘the Plan-Do-Check-Act model (PDCA) used in the majority of management system standards’.

In the ediscovery arena, there is the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) which was setup due to the lack of standards and guidelines in the electronic discovery market. The EDRM is a generic practical process model.

Also, there is another ‘closed’ (non lawyers are not welcome) working group looking at protocols to supplement the CPRs.

What an interesting mix of views/perspectives?!

 

By | Posted in 2008, Community, Process | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

a dedicated video folder for electronic discovery – FindLaw

May 19, 2008 – 12:12 am

For anyone interested in viewing videos, check out this at Findlaw.

Do view the ‘Other Legal Technology Videos’ and  see if you can catch the common themes in these videos and the electronic discovery videos.

 

By | Posted in Law Firms, Process, US | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The Lawyer – calling all litigation professionals

May 18, 2008 – 11:51 pm

Ready yourself for the next 12 months of increased litigation and the challenges of electronic disclosure – From The Lawyer.

What are the challenges of electronic disclosure?

According to the speakers/presenters from the legal world, the challenges are explored by themes which are;

Implications of the latest electronic disclosure developments
Minimising costs associated with eDisclosure
Best practices for managing and preserving electronic information
Developing litigation response strategies
Tips and traps for records management
Litigation strategy
Plus much more…

Not unusual that the legal world have tips and traps for records management.

On the subject of record management, I went to a talk & workshop on records management only last week, conducted by IT/Software professionals. The presenter actually raised some very interesting questions (no tips and traps) for the workshop discussions. One discussion topic was on ‘how to manage across boundaries (inside and outside the organisation)?’

Records management is not a challenge in edisclosure. Records management is already defined by the rules of the games i.e. the CPRs and the various procedures/processes for edisclosure. Ah! Maybe the rules of the games need to be reviewed or re-learnt/re-visited (by lawyers?) or maybe the lawyer’s interpretation of records management is different from what the IT/Software people viewed as records management. For the record, even within the IT/Software community records management have generated heated discussions especially when viewed in terms of knowledge management. Edisclosure is getting ‘relevant/needed/asked for/disputed/evidential’ (or any other keywords searched for) information from knowledge workers to other knowledge workers (or information seekers). Information is knowledge/power.

To me, this is the real challenge. It will involve not only strategy but the art of getting these knowledge workers to really want to collaborate. Who will be responsible for getting the information? Who will be fined? Knowledge workers or their managers?

Maybe the next Lawyer Conference will start to address the real challenges of edisclosure.

By | Posted in 2008, Britain, Community, CPR, Events, Process, Rules/Directions | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Is edisclosure on the ICCA published agenda?

May 18, 2008 – 10:40 pm

Since completion of my dissertation, I have not been actively searching for legal articles or news.

I do know that in the arbitration world, there is an event coming up in June in Dublin. The International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA), founded in 1961, is the leading world-wide organization devoted to promoting international arbitration and other forms of dispute resolution. I have checked the Dublin ICCA 2008 programme and also tried to join the 9th June Workshop. I am in Dublin from 3rd June (for something else) and since I will be free on 9th June, I have requested the Dublin Conference organisers for just one day pass but was flatly rejected. What a pity! Anyhow edisclosure is not on the published agenda.

Luckily I have two great Irish friends, Ms Eileen Duffy and Mr Terence O’Keeffe  (both CIArb Mediators ) who will be having dinner with me on 8th June. I certainly look forward to seeing them again in the beautiful city of Dublin.

By | Posted in 2008, Arbitration, Events | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Who would have guessed?

May 18, 2008 – 10:06 pm

I subscribe to the ProBlogger Blog Tips mailing list and have been receiving & deleting the e-mails for months. Today I actually opened and read the Tips, dated 17-May. Good job I didn’t read the Blog Tips to decide on whether to blog or not. I found couple of questions that caught my attention;
• Is anyone reading my blog?
According to my website stats, since Dec 2007 to 18 May 2008, my blog got 29387 hits. Mostly from the US and the Great Britain. Fourth place (pages and hits) is the Russian Federation and fifth is South Korea. (I am not counting the ‘unknown’ countries). Aways something amazing on the net! Who would have guessed?

• What are other bloggers writing about my blog?
I did find a blogger commenting on my blog!
Check it out here or do a google search on cher devey.

• Do I have anything original and useful to say on my topic?
Is anything original these days?

• What else could I do with the time that I spend on this blog?
Ah! I only blog when I feel like it.

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US and UK/EU Legal & Compliance “Hot Topics”

May 16, 2008 – 12:24 am

It doesn’t look like ediscovery is under the “Hot Topics”.

Maybe ‘ediscovery’ is too hot to handle. The topics listed under the programme, such as recording, securing and accessing client communications are mostly to do with Know Your Customer (KYC).
It would be interesting to hear the recent lessons from the compliance officers and also how they handle and implement KYC.

Will there be ‘leakages’ of information from the International Derivatives Expo 2008?

Highly unlikely…

By | Posted in 2008, Britain, Community, Events, Financial/Banking, US | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Alternative Search Technologies – Too Good to be True

May 9, 2008 – 11:01 pm

It seems that alternative search technologies (alternative to the familiar Keyword and Boolean searches) touted by Vendors are considered as ‘too good to be true’. Check it out yourself at In Search of Better E-Discovery Methods By H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal, New York Law Journal April 23, 2008

The above legal article also mentioned the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) 2006 study which was also examined by Will Uppington in the article, Better Search for E-Discovery, March 11th, 2008

What I find interesting in Will Uppington’s article is the finding; ‘One of the best ways to get better search queries is to commit human resources to improving them, by putting a “human-in-the-loop” while performing searches’.

Reading in between these two ‘search themed’ titles, one from the legal side and the other from a technical perspective, highlighted the contrasting findings and interpretation on the TREC 2006 study

What else can we say/talk about the ‘human-in-the loop’, the ‘virtuous cycle of iterative feedback’ & “interactive” search methodology?

Well such phrases/concepts are not new. What is new is that the ‘human actions’ aspects are creeping (awareness?) into the ediscovery space. Other knowledge researchers outside the ediscovery domain have been busily coming up with phrases/concepts such as the ‘concept searching’ methodologies. Reality (or inertia adoption) testing of such newer technologies are clearly not well understood (too good to be true?) by the courts and practitioners.

On human actions and computer programs, a beautiful quote comes from my friend, Roger C: “While computer programs can write other computer programs, they can’t write the first program”.

To that I will add: An expert is only effective in the human-in-the-loop search if the expert is also an expert in the codes

By | Posted in 2008, FRCP, Law Firms, Process, ServiceProviders, Technology, US | Tagged , | Comments (1)

E-mail Archiving – Myths according to a Solution Provider and Making Sense in Plain English of the FRCP

May 7, 2008 – 4:23 pm

For those using Exchange, Outlook and Active Directory, you may be interested to read the white paper, Email Archiving: Common Myths and Misconceptions by MessageOne, Inc.

If you’re curious on how a Solution Provider ‘makes sense in plain English of the FRCP, scan the posted white paper.

I cannot comment on the MessageOne solution as I have not used or been exposed to the product.

However in the white paper there is a statement ‘Data is never lost, and companies have robust search and retrieval functionality to meet the legal and compliance challenges facing all industries, today.’

‘Data is NEVER lost’? This is a myth with or without an archive system.

It’s so easy to forget that once e-mail is sent /delivered (a copy may reside on your sent folder/archive), the information/data is also OUT of reach of the sender. Another food for though – how to make sense of the clawback agreements for e-mails?

By | Posted in 2008, FRCP, Process, ServiceProviders, Technology, US | Tagged , | Comments (0)

for a bit of fun, view the short video packed with all the ‘news of the day’

May 5, 2008 – 11:12 pm

Let’s hope ‘wire-tapping’ does not creep into the ediscovery domain.

Enjoy the video at http://www.jibjab.com/view/239725.

Thanks to Roger C for sending me the link.

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