I just counted the number of registered users here and click2ediscovery now has a dozen users. With all the jazz and ding-dong (this phrase just sprang to mind !) on ediscovery related stuff, how come no news from the alternative dispute resolution world on edisclosure.

On my radar screen, an ediscovery vendor was recently in the news. I don’t seem able to re-discover/retrieve the news! It’s about a vendor failing to perform or meet ediscovery requirements within their own organisation.

Notice the ‘My Tweets’ on this site? I will be tweeting on the ‘jazz and ding-dong’ on ediscovery coming from various quarters that appears on my radar screen. Will blog when I get to sit down and not jazzing around.

Do join in the jazz and ding-dong or follow edisclosure. More fun than joining another forum or group don’t you agree?

My article “Electronic Discovery/Disclosure: From Litigation to International Commercial Arbitration” appeared in The International Journal of Arbitration, Mediation and Dispute Management, V 74, N 4, Nov 2008 (The Arbitration Journal by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators).

Just want to pass on my acknowledgement here (which appeared in the footnote in my article):

The author (me) would like to thank Martin Goodman and Roger Clough for their individual reviews. This essay is based on the author’s dissertation for a post-graduate diploma in International Commercial Arbitration. The author also wishes to thank Angie Raymond and Stavros Brekoulakis, Queen Mary College, London for their support. Also, many thanks to those who kindly provided access to their articles on their websites/blogs, e.g. Ken Withers.

However, the source of the inspiration for doing my dissertation on ediscovery/edisclosure started when I was involved in a document management programme with a major subprime mortgage company, a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers (yeah!). Companies and all the system documentation (many versions/iterations – which I considered unnecessary but then…that’s another story) disintegrated and perished.

Well, nothing beats experience and I’ve certainly been fortunate to have the opportunity to be involved in exciting software/technological projects. Experience itself though is rather like a piece of paper stored in a cupboard (or rather in the mind). By writing my dissertation and having my article published (reviewed and critic) serves to remind myself the power of sharing/collaborating one’s experience with others. A piece of paper written (like the many documentation I’ve produced) and never opened and shared with others is akin to creating and building junk instead of building one’s knowledge with self and others.

I hope I will continue to learn more by sharing with others. I also hope that others will open up and share their experience.  Many thanks to others who have shared their experience with me in many unconscious and conscious ways.

However, Master Whitaker’s concluding remark resounded or rekindled the credit crisis blah blah blah…
I heard Master Whitaker’s remark towards the end of his speech that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing when it comes to edisclosure.

Mmm…a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, however no knowledge whatsoever creates mass tort as shown by the credit crisis that has swept across from the US to Europe. So credit crisis blah blah blah and ediscovery/disclosure has a common theme or rather a common myth.
When it comes to e-discovery/disclosure, most of the time we are dealing with no knowledge in that no one really and truly knows where the hack a piece of e-document or evidence is located. If we do, then why all the fuss over the need to have such and such policy in place and for keyword search, concept search and other guessing tools?!

Long time ago when I first started work in finance/banking I heard a remark that ‘money is not just on paper transaction but on digital transaction’. It was a difficult concept for me to grasp as I just couldn’t find a ‘tangible’ handle to tie paper (stuff from trees) to digital (stuff of zeros and ones). One thing I did grasp was that digital money is not tangible and not traceable unless the person handling the digital money is tangible or traceable. In all digital transactions which generally involve more than one party, we never really know all the parties involved except we know them as digital accounts. So we have a little knowledge in that we have digital money and digital accounts (and other stuff which we really don’t want to know as we really don’t know – like who owes who and who else owes who etc..in the digital chain of e-money). We have no knowledge of what happens in between the digital money being transformed into paper money and vice versa. Is the little knowledge dangerous? Is the credit crisis dangerous?
Perhaps dangerous in that it has created a global crisis and not dangerous in that it has started a new industry, the ‘credit crisis industry’.

Master Whitaker’s remark was indeed refreshing and relevant in edisclosure. There are still far too many legal practitioners (except perhaps the large law firms in the UK) with little or no knowledge on edisclosure or ESI and many judges that have no knowledge on edisclosure or ESI.
So we are still in dangerous territories when it comes to edisclosure.

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.

The edisclosure ‘fever’ has started for me & I’m all booked to attend. It will be my ‘conference holiday’ and will no doubt bring back some memories of NY as I’ve visited NY back in 1987/8 (work related) and stayed twice at the ‘WTC’. Will certainly visit the site.