If a University of California study is to be believed, 800MB of electronic
data is generated every year for every man, woman, and child on the
planet. (And some of us are responsible for more than others.) Be
that as it may, this Legal Week article is
a nice precis of the state of e-discovery, with particular
attention to metadata and the US/UK "state of play." About
metadata, I have little to add other than to state the fervent hope
that at this point everybody concerned better know that dealing with
metadata is dealing with live ammunition, that it can be (innocently)
altered simply by opening a file to look at it, and that severe court-imposed
sanctions for altering it are beginning to occur.
Far more interesting is the US/UK divide on e-discovery in general. Surprisingly,
litigation support managers are a rare breed in the UK, whereas no serious
US firm would be without one. The implication? "US firms
may be able to steal a march…"
So don’t think of lit-support as merely an unavoidable cost center; could it be a tool in your new-business development efforts?
