eDiscovery Daily Blog

Mobile to the Mainstream All in One Place: eDiscovery Best Practices

Craig Ball has had a lot to say about mobile device discovery, including various posts on his excellent Ball in Your Court blog (we’ve covered several of those, including this one and this one).  Now, he has assembled all of that good information in a single guide for reviewing all at once!

Mobile to the Mainstream: Preservation and Extraction of iOS Content for E-Discovery is a 24-page PDF guide that is comprised of two sections:

  • Section I (pp. 3-8 and Appendices 1-3) addresses simple, scalable preservation of iPhone and iPad content, enabling litigants to meet the duty to preserve data in anticipation of civil litigation. It informs attorneys who aren’t tech-savvy how to handle iOS-device preservation and explains why there’s little burden or cost attendant to preserving iPhones and iPads. Unlike in other scenarios, Craig points out here the benefits of custodian-directed collection (like the fact that the custodian doesn’t have to give up their phone) and the tamper-proof nature of the iPhone backup process to provide a step-by-step process to perform the backup.
  • Section II (pp. 17 et seq. and Appendix 4) looks at simple, low-cost approaches to extracting relevant mobile data to a standard e-discovery workflow and offers a Mobile Evidence Scorecard to promote consensus as to what forms of mobile content should be routinely collected and reviewed in e-discovery, giving due consideration to need, speed and expense. The Scorecard itself is terrific as it provides a simple handy reference guide regarding the different types of mobile data and the ease of collection, ease of review, potential relevance and whether you should expect to routinely collect that mobile data type.  Craig also identifies several iPhone Backup Data Extraction Tools that are worth checking out, as well.

In the introduction to the guide, Craig sums up the need for these guidelines and tips, as follows:

“Chances are you’re reading this on your phone or tablet. If not, I’ll bet your phone or tablet are at hand. Few of us separate from our mobile devices for more than minutes a day. On average, cell users spend four hours a day looking at that little screen. On average. If your usage is much less, someone else’s is much more.

It took 30 years for e-mail to displace paper as our primary target in discovery. It’s taken barely 10 for mobile data to unseat e-mail as the Holy Grail of probative electronic evidence. Mobile is where evidence lives now; yet, mobile data remains “off the table” in discovery. It’s infrequently preserved, searched or produced.”

Craig will also be presenting regarding mobile devices at the University of Florida E-Discovery Conference in March.  As I noted yesterday, early bird registration is open for $49 for both in person or livestream until January 31st!  That’s 75% off the in-person price!  You can register here to attend, either in person or via livestream.  Do it quickly and save!

Craig will also be presenting as part of our NineForum educational presentations CloudNine is conducting at Legaltech.  More on that program to come in the next few days – it’s very exciting!

So, what do you think?  Do you routinely deal with mobile devices in discovery or is it still rare?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Sponsor: This blog is sponsored by CloudNine, which is a data and legal discovery technology company with proven expertise in simplifying and automating the discovery of data for audits, investigations, and litigation. Used by legal and business customers worldwide including more than 50 of the top 250 Am Law firms and many of the world’s leading corporations, CloudNine’s eDiscovery automation software and services help customers gain insight and intelligence on electronic data.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.