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Electronic Discovery

eDiscovery Case Law: Defendants' Privilege Waived for "Completely Ineffective" Discovery Procedures

In a case over purported building and zoning code violations, an Illinois District Court has found the defendants responsible for inadvertently producing several privileged documents during discovery and for a failure to correct the problem in a timely manner, and has ordered the privilege to be waived.

In Thorncreek Apartments III, LLC v. Vill. of Park Forest, Nos. 8 C 1225, 08-C-0869, 08-C-4303, 2011 WL 3489828 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 9, 2011), the plaintiff appealed to have six documents that were accidentally submitted by the defendants (as part of discovery nine months earlier) declared to be not subject to privilege. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiff after the following events:

  • More than two months after the production of discovery documents was completed, the plaintiffs attempted to use two of the defendants’ privileged documents at deposition and the defendants became aware of problems in their own discovery production. Defense counsel contacted the plaintiff’s counsel shortly thereafter to notify them that certain privileged documents had been produced inadvertently during discovery.
  • Four months later, defense counsel produced a privilege log that noted 159 documents that should have been protected during discovery, but which had all been inadvertently disclosed. Defense counsel had intended that plaintiffs would have access to all documents in their shared online discovery database, but that documents “marked as ‘privileged’ during its review… would be automatically withheld from the production database.”
  • The defense and plaintiffs were able to come to an agreement about the majority of the documents between themselves, but six documents remained at issue. The plaintiff filed a motion “seeking an order finding that six documents produced… are not protected from disclosure by the attorney-client privilege or, alternately, are not protected from disclosure because the privilege has been waived” by production of the documents during discovery.
  • The court examined the events of the previous nine months, since the beginning of discovery, and determined that the defendants’ steps to prevent disclosure were “completely ineffective.”
  • The defendant was found to have failed to perform a final check of its discovery documents before production, to have inadvertently produced all of its privileged documents, and to have taken an excessive amount of time after such production to discover its error due, in part, to its failure to produce a privilege log at any time before the problem was uncovered.
  • A portion of each of the six documents was found to be subject to attorney-client privilege, but despite the inadvertent nature of production, the court found the defense entirely at fault for the violation of privilege and ruled accordingly that privilege had been waived.

So, what do you think? Does this kind of inadvertent disclosure constitute a waiver of privilege? Was the ruling appropriate or should the defense have been allowed to “clawback” those privileged documents? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Trends: Lawyers Versus Machines – Who’s “Winning”?
 

As discussed on this blog, mainstream publications including The New York Times and Forbes have noticed the rise of search technology in discovery, particularly predictive coding. The New York Times article, Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software, inspired a lot of consternation in the legal community by proposing that technology was replacing human lawyers. Among the first to reply, Ralph Losey wrote a blog post New York Times Discovers eDiscovery, But Gets the Jobs Report  Wrong, arguing that “the supposed job-chilling impact of these new technologies on the legal profession was off the mark. In fact, the contrary is true.”

However, the Times article does point to a real trend – clients demanding that their outside counsel and litigation support teams use technology to work more efficiently. “Just because the “paper of record” says something doesn’t make it so, of course. But it does mean that every GC and Litigation DGC/AGC in America (and likely Canada) now has this trend on their radar,” litigation project management guru Steven Levy wrote on the blog Lexican.

The obvious problem with the New York Times article is that search and review is an iterative process and demands human intervention to make the machines involved function properly.  However, the missing piece of the discussion today is exactly what the relation between human reviewers and computers should be. There is a nascent movement to investigate this topic, finding the line where machine-led review ends and where human intervention is necessary.

Recent research by some of the leaders of the TREC Legal Track research project has begun to explore the interaction between human and machine review. Maura Grossman, a litigator with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and one of the TREC coordinators, and Gordon Cormack, a computer scientist and fellow TREC-er, wrote the research paper Technology Assisted Review in eDiscovery Can be More Effective and Efficient Than Manual Review. As the title indicates, human review cannot match the accuracy of technology-assisted review. However, the paper points out the need for a roadmap detailing the ideal interaction between human lawyers and machine review in litigation. “A technology-assisted review process involves the interplay of humans and computers to identify the documents in a collection that are responsive to a production request, or to identify those documents that should be withheld on the basis of privilege.”

What may be endangered is the existing review process, as it has traditionally been practiced, not human attorneys. Bennett Borden, an attorney with Williams Mullin, argues the linear review processes cannot produce the same results as the skillful use of technology. He has some interesting asides about the ways lawyers can do things computer searches cannot. For example, human reviewers are able to intuitively “come upon a scent” of relevant documents that machines missed. He says that reviewers not only are able to effectively pursue information by following leads initiated by a computer, but they actually enjoyed the process more than straight-ahead manual review.

Clearly, more research is needed in this area, but if lawyers are going to defend their role in litigation, defining the role of lawyers in discovery is an important question. What do you think?  Please share any comments you might have or if you'd like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Trends: Thursday’s ILTA Sessions
 

As noted the past three days, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual educational conference of 2011 is happening this week and eDiscoveryDaily is here to report about the latest eDiscovery trends being discussed at the show.  Today’s the last day to check out the show if you’re in the Nashville area with a number of sessions available and over 280(!) exhibitors providing information on their products and services, including (shameless plug warning!) my company, CloudNine Discovery, which is previewing the version 10.5 release of our linear review application, OnDemand®, prior to release next month.  Last chance!

Perform a “find” on today’s ILTA conference schedule for “discovery” and you’ll get 11 hits.  So, there is plenty to talk about!  Sessions in the main conference tracks include:

9:15 AM – 10:30 AM:

Emerging E-Discovery Technologies: Predictive Coding and Remote Collection

Description: Law firms, corporations and government agencies continue to feel the impact of addressing electronic discovery requirements with growing data sizes and shrinking timelines. Technology providers have developed some practical solutions that will increase efficiency, minimize cost and address quality to minimize risk. This session will discuss two of those emerging technologies: predictive coding and remote collection. Please join us in an open discussion with industry leaders who will provide practical thoughts to consider when utilizing these solutions.

Speakers are: Dominic Jaar – KPMG LLP; Greg Buckles – Reason-eD, LLC; L. Keven Hayworth – Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, L.L.P.; Howard Sklar – Recommind; Patrick Zeller – Guidance Software

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM:

Legal vs. IT: Aligning Litigation and Practice Support

Description: Many are talking about a perceived conflict between legal and IT –– whether they can get along and speak the same language. An experienced panel will help you see litigation and practice support as bilingual facilitators, as they discuss characteristics of highly-functional multidisciplinary teams and relationship-building, bringing together the viewpoints of technology professionals and practice group members to achieve shared success.

Speakers are: Deborah Ratterman-Warnecke – Sears Holdings Corporation; John L. Kapp – Shearman & Sterling, LLP; Barb Sloan – Hunsucker Goodstein & Nelson PC; Carolyn Anger – Stikeman Elliott LLP

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM:

Data Archiving: Where Did All the Storage Space Go?

Description: Join us for an interactive discussion about how IT professionals, litigation support departments and attorneys work together to identify litigation data that can be archived. We’ll address such questions as: How do you categorize data? What archiving solutions/processes are being used? What are the costs? Learn how firms are archiving and saving on storage while keeping data available to attorneys.

Speakers are: Scott M. Cohen – Winston & Strawn LLP; John Elbasan – Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP; Vincent Collado – Computer Design & Integration

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM:

LexisNexis: Gaining a Competitive Edge and Economic Advantage in E-Discovery

Description: The nature of litigation is that it is often sporadic, unpredictable and can fall outside the scope of standard litigation-support processes. Learn how to increase your ability to say "yes" to challenging deadlines, and decrease delays due to managing difficult data by utilizing a hybrid approach to what is kept in-house and what is outsourced. This panel discussion will provide new strategies and best practices for leveraging internal and external teams, as well as LexisNexis e-discovery and litigation-management technology to add greater flexibility and cost efficiency to your cases and a competitive edge in the discovery process.

Speakers are: George William Farrall – Integreon; Jennifer Stevenson – LexisNexis; Miklos Wenczl – Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP

For a complete listing of all sessions at the conference, click here.

eDiscoveryDaily will also be “tweeting” periodically throughout ILTA, so feel free to check out our updates at twitter.com/Cloud9Discovery.

So, what do you think?  Did you attend ILTA this year?  What were the highlights for you?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Trends: Wednesday’s ILTA Sessions
 

As noted yesterday and Monday, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual educational conference of 2011 is happening this week and eDiscoveryDaily is here to report about the latest eDiscovery trends being discussed at the show.  There’s still time to check out the show if you’re in the Nashville area with a number of sessions available and over 280(!) exhibitors providing information on their products and services, including (shameless plug warning!) my company, CloudNine Discovery, which is previewing the version 10.5 release of our linear review application, OnDemand®, prior to release next month.

Perform a “find” on today’s ILTA conference schedule for “discovery” and you’ll get 9 hits.  So, there is plenty to talk about!  Sessions in the main conference tracks include:

9:15 AM – 10:30 AM:

Corporate Legal E-Discovery: Six Topics in 60 Minutes

Description: Join our discussion of e-discovery from the corporate perspective. We'll cover a variety of topics, as selected by YOU, that range from the infrastructure needed to support in-house e-discovery, pitfalls to avoid, practical strategies for managing the process, to vendor management, case closure and more.

Speakers are: Joanne Lane – MetLife; Robert Stangler – Best Buy; Alexander George Arato – CA, Inc.

1:30 PM – 2:30 PM:

Best Practices for Social Media in the Corporation

Description: What are the dos and don'ts for a corporation seeking to utilize social media? Learn more about which vehicles are permitted, policies and procedures, benefits to the company and e-discovery aspects. See business-use examples as well.

Speakers are: Deborah Ratterman-Warnecke – Sears Holdings Corporation; Joel Resnick – Evolver; Teresa Burnett – Deere & Company

For a complete listing of all sessions at the conference, click here.

eDiscoveryDaily will also be “tweeting” periodically throughout ILTA, so feel free to check out our updates at twitter.com/Cloud9Discovery.

So, what do you think?  Are you attending ILTA this year?  Have any sessions stood out for you as particularly enlightening?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Trends: Tuesday’s ILTA Sessions
 

As noted yesterday, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual educational conference of 2011 is happening this week and eDiscoveryDaily is here to report about the latest eDiscovery trends being discussed at the show.  There’s still time to check out the show if you’re in the Nashville area with a number of sessions available and over 280(!) exhibitors providing information on their products and services, including (shameless plug warning!) my company, CloudNine Discovery, which is previewing the version 10.5 release of our linear review application, OnDemand®, prior to release next month.

Perform a “find” on today’s ILTA conference schedule for “discovery” and you’ll get 6 hits.  So, there is plenty to talk about!  Sessions in the main conference tracks include:

9:15 AM – 10:30 AM & 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM (2 part session):

Hands-On: Forensics 101 for Legal Professionals

Description: Forensic collection is often associated with full-disk imaging. However, targeted and remote collection has been commonplace for several years and has become best practice. Taught by a former attorney and computer forensics expert, this session will dispel such misconceptions around the concept of forensic search and collection and walk attendees through a series of hands-on exercises. Legal professionals will learn requirements and best practices to ensure their collections are forensically sound, and they will learn the pros and cons of different collection methodologies, enabling them to effectively evaluate their options in the real world. Attendees will use a forensics-based e-discovery platform to perform hands-on exercises covering acquisition, validation, chain of custody, data analysis and reporting.

Speaker is: David Speringo – AccessData (Summation)

1:30 PM – 2:30 PM:

Software for Your Litigation Support Tool Belt

Description: There are many options for electronic Bates labeling, redaction, PST management, metadata retrieval, load file creation, etc. This session will highlight the various tools and utilities available to litigation support professionals regardless of firm size. We will focus on some industry standard must-haves and little-known jewels.

Speakers are: Kyle Neitzel – Lindquist & Vennum PLLP; Danny Chan – Bereskin & Parr LLP

For a complete listing of all sessions at the conference, click here.

eDiscoveryDaily will also be “tweeting” periodically throughout ILTA, so feel free to check out our updates at twitter.com/Cloud9Discovery.

So, what do you think?  Are you planning to attend ILTA this year?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Trends: Welcome to ILTA 2011!
 

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual educational conference of 2011 kicked off yesterday with several networking events, and begins in earnest today with the first day of sessions.  eDiscoveryDaily is here to report about the latest eDiscovery trends being discussed at the show.  Over the next four days, we will provide a description each day of some of the sessions related to eDiscovery to give you a sense of the topics being covered.

If you’re in the Nashville area, come check out the show – there are a number of sessions available and over 280(!) exhibitors providing information on their products and services, including (shameless plug warning!) my company, CloudNine Discovery, which is previewing the version 10.5 release of our linear review application, OnDemand®, prior to release next month.

Perform a “find” on today’s ILTA conference schedule for “discovery” and you’ll get 7 hits.  So, there is plenty to talk about!  Sessions in the main conference tracks include:

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM:

Litigation and Practice Support Professional Development

Description: In the world of litigation and practice support, sometimes there are more job opportunities than there are people to fill them. Once you’ve gone through the long process of hiring the perfect candidate(s), how do you develop and retain your litigation and practice support teams? In this session, we will discuss various views, tips and tricks regarding professional development, retention, training, education, certification, rewards and recognition.

Speakers are: Cheryl J. Proctor – Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz; Julie K. Brown – Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP; Ruth Hauswirth – Cooley LLP; Randal Girouard – Haynes and Boone, LLP

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM:

Offshoring and Outsourcing: What It Means for Your Firm and Your Job

Description: Are you ready for the growing impact on the legal market of outsourcing and offshoring? The forces that are driving legal work towards LPOs seem unstoppable and are already changing the way clients think about legal work and the way law firms carry out that work. This affects lawyers and technologists. How should you and your firm respond and adapt to these changes? As the legal marketplace breaks down along the "cost/value" continuum, where will you and your firm end up on that spectrum?

Speakers are: Toby Brown – Vinson & Elkins, L.L.P.; Jordan Furlong – Edge International Consulting; Kevin Colangelo – Pangea3, A Thomson Reuters Business

Controlling Litigation Support Costs

Description: Peer group session leader Scott Cohen will cover common and not-so-common methods of achieving cost control in litigation support effort, including proportionality targeted collection/preservation. We'll also discuss off-shoring and searching/filtering/analytics.

Speakers are: Scott M. Cohen – Winston & Strawn LLP; Kevin Behan – Winston & Strawn LLP; Dan Regard – iDiscovery Solutions, Inc.; Jeff Fehrman – Integreon

2:30 PM – 3:30 PM:

Extending Contentious Matter Extranets to Transactions

Description: Come see how you can use your existing information management skills and procedures to offer collaborative services to your transaction-driven practice teams; extend your extranet infrastructure for use across your entire legal practice and matters; apply security, confidentiality and defensibility expertise to new opportunities; and assess for key functionality needed for providing matter extranets to transactions.

Speakers are: Michelle Mahoney – Mallesons Stephen Jaques; Thomas Barce – Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.; Beth Patterson – Allens Arthur Robinson; John Shaw – IntraLinks

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM:

Applying Litigation Support Tools to the Transactional Practice

Description: Law firms and corporate legal departments are looking for ways to leverage existing technology investments in other practice areas. This session will discuss the application of information management systems, technologies and tools –– traditionally used in litigation support –– to the transactional practices.

Speakers are: Thomas Barce – Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.; Duane Lites – Jackson Walker L.L.P.; Joel Lessem – Firmex Inc.; Danny Thankachan – Thompson & Knight, L.L.P.

For a complete listing of all sessions at the conference, click here.

eDiscoveryDaily will also be “tweeting” periodically throughout ILTA, so feel free to check out our updates at twitter.com/Cloud9Discovery.

So, what do you think?  Are you planning to attend ILTA this year?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Best Practices: 6 Project Management Practices to Apply to eDiscovery Cases
 

We’ve discussed project management as it relates to eDiscovery many times on this blog and even discussed whether there is any difference in managing legal projects vs. other types of projects.  This article published on Law Technology News yesterday, written by David Kearney of Cohen & Grigsby provides a good summary of six best practices to apply not only to eDiscovery projects, but to any project.

Everybody loves lists, right?  At least I do.  Here are the six best practices the author listed, with some of my own observations:

  1. Identify stakeholders and manage expectations. Every project has one or more people who have a stake in the end result (i.e., stakeholders).  That could be counsel, end clients, third parties or all of the above. It’s important to communicate expectations and time frames clearly (and, personally, I try to follow up with written documentation of all communicated expectations to minimize the chance of misunderstandings).  It’s also important to have a champion of the project to keep everyone on the same page.
  2. Communicate and report. Did I get ahead of myself and already mention communications?  The author advocates a communication plan and reporting methods, which is vital for keeping people on the same page.  It should include regular, periodic reporting (e.g., a weekly status report) and a plan for communicating ad-hoc updates (including key decisions made).  The means for communicating decisions may depend on the importance of the decision – for key decisions, I’ve been known to meet with or call the key players and follow up with an email to make sure that everyone is informed.
  3. Define the scope. The author discussed defining the scope to minimize the impact to costs, schedules, quality and resources.  This is certainly true and an important up-front step.  But, guess what?  Scope frequently changes.  Collections are larger than you thought, you have more custodians than you thought, additional services are requested, etc.  So, it’s important to gather as much information up front as possible to define the scope as accurately as possible, but also be prepared to adjust scope as things change and communicate (there’s that word again!) any changes in scope to the project team.
  4. Create the plan. The author talks about defining “what needs to happen, when it needs to happen, how much it's going to cost, the risks, how risks will be managed, how long project activities will take, and who will perform the work”. I especially like addressing how risks will be managed.  On projects I’ve worked on before, we’ve actually done a “pre-mortem” to brainstorm what can go wrong (i.e., risks) and identify a plan for mitigating each of those risks up front.  This exercise can avoid a lot of headaches during the project.
  5. Manage costs. Two words: budget and track.  You should prepare a budget at the beginning of a project and track costs against that budget throughout the project.  And, if scope changes, the budget should be updated to reflect those changes.
  6. Document lessons learned. The author discusses the importance of maintaining historical data on projects to track decisions, resources, etc., and then conducting a “post-mortem” (my words, not his) to learn from your mistakes and also your successes(!).  You’ll hopefully be managing more projects in the future, so you want to make sure you can learn as much as you can from each previous project you’ve managed.

So, what do you think? Have you managed any eDiscovery projects?  Did you learn any valuable lessons from those experiences? Please share any comments you might have or if you'd like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Case Law: Sanctions for Spoliation, Even When Much of the Data Was Restored

A Virginia court recently ordered sanctions against the defendant in a case of deliberate spoliation of electronic discovery documents.

In E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co. v. Kolon Indus., Inc., No. 3:09cv58, 2011 WL 2966862 (E.D. Va. July 21, 2011), the defendant was found to have committed spoliation “in bad faith” in a manner that constituted a “violation of duty… to the Court and the judicial process,” as follows:

  • The defendant, Kolon Industries Inc., was charged with misappropriation of trade secrets, conspiracy, information theft, and other allegations.
  • Within two days of receiving the plaintiff’s February 4, 2009 complaint, the defendant issued a litigation hold to upper-level employees. Several days after that, on February 10, a second hold notice was sent to all employees in English – even though most of Kolon’s staff members did not speak English.
  • Subsequently, many of the defendant’s key employees were found to have deleted files and emails that may have been relevant for discovery. After extensive investigation, the plaintiff’s expert discovered that the defendant had demonstrably deleted at least “17,811 files and email items” that should have been preserved for discovery.
  • The court determined that employees had deleted ESI “in bad faith,” conducting intentional spoliation and alteration of relevant evidence in direct contravention of the demands of discovery.
  • Even though many (but not all) of the documents were recovered (most from backup tape), the court rejected the defendant’s argument that “there can be no spoliation finding because many documents were recovered” and eventually produced, stating: “The fact that technology permits the undoing of spoliation does not change at all the fact that spoliation has occurred.”
  • Accordingly, the court leveled sanctions against the defendant, ordering it to pay the plaintiff’s legal fees, costs and expenses on this motion, and ordered an adverse inference instruction to the jury.  However, the court found that default judgment requested by the plaintiff was not appropriate, citing defendant’s attempts to place two litigation holds and the “good fortune that many deleted items were recoverable because of the preservation of Kolon’s backup tapes.”

So, what do you think? Were the sanctions appropriate, or should recovery of much of the deleted data have spared the defendant in this case? Have you ever been involved in a case where deleted electronic documents were recovered and sanctions avoided? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Trends: North Carolina Adopts eDiscovery Rules
 

Earlier this year, Wisconsin and Connecticut adopted new eDiscovery rules.  On October 1, changes to the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure will go into effect to provide guidelines for handling eDiscovery in North Carolina state courts.  The rule changes, for the most part, follow the same guidelines as the 2006 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.  Here is a summary of the changes:

  • Discovery Plans: Parties to a case now have the right to require the development of a discovery plan, to manage all discovery in the case (not just eDiscovery).  The parties are required to meet to discuss the possibility of settlement and the preparation of a discovery plan to address discovery of electronically stored information (“ESI”), production of ESI, discovery limitations or phasing, and the deadline for completion of all discovery.
  • Required Production of Metadata: The definition of ESI now expressly includes the metadata for date sent, date received, author, and recipients. The definition of ESI does not include other metadata unless the parties agree or the court so orders.  This is a significant departure from the Federal Rules.
  • Privilege Logs: Privilege logs describing privileged material withheld from discovery are now required.
  • Inadvertent Disclosure: The new rules protect inadvertent disclosure of privileged information during discovery.
  • Sanctions: The amendments adopt a safe harbor provision which mirrors the federal rule, protecting a party from sanctions for losing ESI “as a result of routine, good faith operation of an electronic information system.”
  • Subpoenas:   Rule 45 of the NC Rules of Civil Procedure has been revised to provide that parties producing documents need not produce the same ESI in more than one format, or provide ESI that is not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or costs.

So, what do you think? Are you aware of the “state” of eDiscovery rules in your state?  Please share any comments you might have or if you'd like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Best Practices: When Collecting, Image is Not Always Everything
 

There was a commercial in the early 1990s for Canon cameras in which tennis player Andre Agassi uttered the quote that would haunt him for most of his early career – “Image is everything.”  The quote haunted him because, as a young player, he was considered to be more style than substance and unable to “win the big one” – a reputation that he ultimately overcame.

When it comes to eDiscovery preservation and collection, there are times when “Image is everything”, as in a forensic “image” of the media is necessary to preserve all potentially responsive ESI.  This is especially true when one party is suspected of deleting ESI to avoid producing it in Discovery.  For example, a forensic copy of a hard drive will include every byte of data on that drive, including data in unallocated space and file slack – these are locations on the drive that may contain data that was once actively used, but is now available to be overwritten after that data was “deleted”.

However, forensic imaging of media is usually not necessary for Discovery purposes. When it is necessary, the parties (usually in coordination with the court) must establish a protocol for how that inspection will take place. This protocol must be conducted in a manner that is verifiable and is usually conducted by an experienced professional, trained to collect data in a forensically sound manner and qualified to testify in court to that process if required.

For most cases, collection involves straightforward copying of the active targeted ESI as it exists on the producing party’s system.  However, to maintain the integrity of the metadata, not just any means of copying will do.  Copying files with “drag and drop” using Windows Explorer may get the files from one place to another, but key metadata (such as file creation date, which reflects the date of the copy, NOT the original) may be changed.

Fortunately when doing a targeted collection, there are several applications that, if used correctly, will copy files quickly and effectively while preserving the metadata.  Here are a few:

  • SafeCopy 2: Easy to use file copy utility created by Pinpoint Labs specifically for eDiscovery.
  • Robocopy: Microsoft utility for copying files from one location to another.
  • Upcopy: An “intelligent” file copy utility specifically suited for eDiscovery.

Also, FTK® Imager is an imaging and forensic image preview tool that is a free download and part of AccessData’s Forensic Toolkit®.  FTK® Imager also has the option to forensically acquire specific files using the custom content image option.

With any of these utilities, you can support the targeted collection needs for most cases.

So, what do you think? Have you used any of these utilities for eDiscovery collection?  Please share any comments you might have or if you'd like to know more about a particular topic.