E-discovery seminar and downloadable presentations

I attended a very interesting e-discovery seminar just over a week ago in Washington DC, organised by GTSI and with an excellent set of speakers. Metadata and archive formats (ODF and PDF/a are key archival formats) were mentioned frequently.

The presentations are all available at this page.

E-discovery and the FRCP amends – one year on

It’s nearly a year since the US’s Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) that govern e-discovery were amended. CNET has an excellent round-up of recent legal cases covering the discovery of electronic data – really a must-read for anyone concerned with this area.

The author also quotes Williams v Sprint, a slightly older case from 2005, where the judge ruled that where electronic documents are required to be produced, they must be in the original format including metadata. This still seems to be a grey area, and the FRCP guidance seems to also have picked up on the judge’s statement in this case that producing documents “as they are maintained in the regular course of business” is sufficient.

The lesson? Put in place a policy now that manages and cleans metadata in business documents, before any litigation!