On Wednesday, March 3, 2010, at 9am PST, EDEN will present the first in a new series of monthly, 30-minute webcasts on the Fundamentals of Electronic Discovery.

Presented by attorneys and project managers at EDEN and Blank Law + Technology P.S., the monthly webcasts will feature in depth exploration of the Electronic Discovery Funnel, illustrating and providing Tips for Success for each step of the e-discovery lifecycle from Early Case Assessment to Document Management and Production.

EDEN’s Fundamentals of Electronic Discovery webcasts are designed to help EDEN members and others working in e-discovery to understand the industry jargon and to navigate the basic steps of the e-discovery process, enhancing situational awareness and providing practice tips gleaned from real-world experience as well as practical tools for achieving time and cost efficiency.

Conceived as an interactive educational forum, EDEN’s Fundamentals of Electronic Discovery webcasts are open to the public and all webcast attendees are encouraged to ask questions throughout the presentation via live instant messaging.  A brief question-and-answer session will also close each session.

EDEN’s Fundamentals of Electronic Discovery webcasts will be offered monthly.  Future dates include: Tuesday, April 6, and Thursday, May 8.

There is no cost to attend, but space is limited and advance registration is required.  To register, please contact: clopez@edenhub.com and include the word “Register” in your email subject line.

LIVE WEBCAST DETAILS:

Title:     FUNDAMENTALS OF E-DISCOVERY
Date:     Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Time:    9am PST
Cost:      Free

Since the launch of the Electronic Data Extraction Network (EDEN) in mid-2009, EDEN’s membership base of Outsource IT vendors has grown to more than 150 companies located in all 50 states and in every major city in the United States.

As many of EDEN’s Outsource IT members know from personal experience over the past nine months, our ability to use the network’s reach to perform litigation-related data imaging and extraction services nationally is unparalleled.  We continue to add Outsource IT members every week and our goal is to have 300 such members by the end of 2010.

Achieving our initial goal of 150 Outsource IT members in all 50 states (plus Canada), is an important milestone for EDEN.  It means that we are now in a position to welcome other members who are not service providers but who have an interest in taking advantage of EDEN’s resources, standards, and community reach.

We already have dozens of non-vendor members who have contacted us and insisted on early membership, but we have deferred many more inquiries while waiting for our performance base to be established.  Starting today, we will actively offer the full range of membership privileges to qualified applicants.

For EDEN to maintain its standards and best practices leadership, the points of view of manufacturers, legal counsel, in-house IT personnel, law enforcement, the judiciary, and others are all important.  We want to encourage communication about the practical challenges of electronic data extraction, processing, search, and utilization in the context of civil and criminal litigation.

As listed at the membership information page of the EDEN website, the EDEN member categories are:

• IT SERVICES – OUTSOURCED.

This membership category forms the core of the Electronic Data Extraction Network.  These organizations (they are nearly all organizations, and not individuals) are available to undertake EDEN projects based on their geographical reach.  Organizations and individuals can “specialize” by obtaining one or more certifications in the following areas: Computer Forensics First Responder; Early Case Assessment; Extraction and Preservation; Processing and Macrosearching; Litigation Document Hosting; Document Production; E-Discovery Review Team Provider; Computer Forensics Expert; E-Discovery Expert; Data Mapping/Electronic Document Management; and Privacy Ombudsman.

Most of these members are professional services firms who take the place of all or a portion of their customers’ information services staff.  However, organizations providing electronic discovery services specifically (and not network or security services, for example) also fall into this category.

The remaining membership categories are open to qualified persons who have an interest in electronic discovery, including e-discovery standards, methods and best practices.  These members do not provide EDEN services; they support EDEN and each other by being part of the EDEN community, benefiting from the information and experience shared across the network.

• IT SERVICES – IN-HOUSE

This membership category is for organizations and individuals who provide information technology services to a single client or client group, and who are not available for EDEN data extraction projects.  This category is best suited to IT personnel who do not wish to make themselves available for outside projects, but who desire the advantages of EDEN standards, best practices, and community.

• LEGAL/SECURITY – IN-HOUSE

This membership category is for attorneys, paralegals, legal secretaries, and litigation support professionals who work for, and provide services to, a single organization.  EDEN distinguishes “in-house” legal personnel from private practice personnel because the in-house perspective is often distinct.  Corporate security officers also join within this category.

• LEGAL/SECURITY - PRIVATE PRACTICE
  

This membership category is for attorneys, paralegals, legal secretaries, and litigation support professionals who provide services to clients.  Usually, this means that these members work for large or small law firms.  This category also includes private investigators and security consultants.

• GOVERNMENT & LAW ENFORCEMENT

This membership category covers all branches of government (including the judiciary), along with law enforcement specifically and persons primarily interested in e-discovery policy.

• EDUCATION/NON-PROFIT

Educators, education administrators, full-time students and employees of nonprofit organizations may join this membership category in order to receive discounts against EDEN training programs.

• FORENSICS/E-DISCOVERY HARDWARE & SOFTWARE

This membership category is for developers of hardware and software solutions to e-discovery.

There is some overlap between membership categories; we generally suggest that organizations and individuals select a category that most closely matches their respective interests.  The only exception to this is that if a member desires to be contacted for EDEN projects, the member should join as an “IT Services—Outsourced” member.  For example, an attorney who wishes to be available to perform Early Case Assessment services should join as an IT Services—Outsourced member and indicate a willingness to provide ECA services.

Finally, there are a few membership categories in addition to those listed above that are not open to general membership—they are by invitation only.  These include Board of Governors, Privacy Ombudsman, and Standards Council.  If you have an interest in serving in these membership capacities, contact EDEN for more information.

Thank you for your interest in membership.  Call or email us if you have any questions.  We look forward to welcoming you to EDEN!

By: Eric Blank

In recent years, there has been a great deal of discussion about standards in electronic discovery, most of which has focused on the big-picture issues of scope, cost and cost shifting.  These are important questions eloquently argued in the courts.  Teams of attorneys and e-discovery support organizations are also making headway against the most pressing e-discovery concerns, such as when, if ever, to search backup tapes.

In my view, though, what has been noticeably missing from this debate is discussion of the mundane, pick-and-shovel e-discovery concerns that affect every case.  I mean the elementary technical issues and practical challenges involved in extracting data from electronic storage media, processing the data and its metadata into document review software applications, and supporting the review and production of the data as discovery or evidence.  We need to agree on the best way to do all of these, with the equipment available to us today.  We also need to agree on the best way to document the process.

To address this need, EDEN is developing its EDEN Standards to provide members and electronic discovery vendors best-practices guidance in the identification, extraction, preservation, processing, search, review and production of electronically stored information.  The EDEN Standards are presented from the viewpoint of the technical personnel supporting electronic discovery in litigation.  They are designed to be practical in nature, and include forms, templates and record-keeping details.  EDEN Standards are properly crafted if EDEN members perceive them to be sensible – even obvious – and in line with what most of our community would consider reasonable practices.  No e-discovery support technician should be surprised by any Standard.

If our national EDEN community agrees on best-practices approaches to execution and documentation, we all benefit.  First, we will do our jobs well.  Second, we and our clients will know that the data extracted or processed by us has been handled in a safe and reasonable manner.  Our standardized records-keeping processes will reflect the quality of our work.  When an attorney or judge asks how we can be confident that we have taken the right course of action, we can point to the backing of an organization with members in every state.

Nothing like this exists at present.  E-discovery vendors are mostly on their own, or supported by fragmented, informal groups.  Recordkeeping is learned by experience, or from others who learned the same way.  No one can point to a formalized process or an accepted best practices standard.  Does this mean that today’s practices are poor?  Not necessarily.  It means only that practices are diverse.  Many in the e-discovery community are doing a terrific job.  Some are in over their heads.

What a lack of standards does mean is that we are challenged to defend our work piecemeal when it is subjected to scrutiny.  How many copies did we make during our single opportunity to create an image of a contested hard drive?  Why did we image some drives, and merely copy others?  How did we decide to approach extraction efforts from a mail server, and why?  Our answers may all make sense, but it would be far more comforting to call on the additional support of an established standard -  a practical, sensible guideline developed with the input of a nationwide community of e-discovery service providers.

The ongoing development of standards will also help our community keep up to date on the ever-evolving and emerging technical and legal challenges of e-discovery by keeping us engaged in dialogue about recent developments in our industry and our responses.  This is always beneficial, and we want to do all that we can to support such communication.

Ultimately, EDEN Standards will help EDEN members and others in the computer forensics and electronic discovery communities to produce defensible, industry-supported work product and documentation – securing the functions and processes of electronic discovery.  We hope that you will join us in their development.

Please submit comments, suggestions, and inquiries regarding the EDEN Standards to: standards@edenhub.com.

By: Alex Harmon

Microsoft recently opened access to the beta version of Office 2010, so of course I couldn’t resist downloading it. While most of the programs and features appear to be similar if not identical to their Office 2007 counterparts, Outlook 2010 has seen some overhaul in both the look-and-feel department and in how the software handles email accounts and stores.

A few things I’ve noticed so far:

• An option to define a default mail store for an account in the account creation wizard, simplifying the Internet mail account creation process significantly.
• Creation of a new .PST mail store for each and every new account added. The created mail store seems to take on the name given to the account. For instance, if I add an Internet email account for the address jdoe@domain.com and leave the account’s name at the default value, I’ll get a .PST file named jdoe@domain.com.pst. While this behavior is possible in earlier versions of Outlook, it’s nice to see it as default behavior in Outlook 2010 Beta.
• Storage of mail stores in a different path. The .PSTs are now stored in: C:\Users\username\Documents\Outlook Files\. This may be something that e-discovery vendors performing email collection may need to keep in mind.

Note that these observations apply to the Office 2010 Beta build I downloaded on December 10, 2009, and installed on my Windows Vista machine, and may be subject to change. My tests are just starting and I’ll keep you posted on any other interesting items I find.

Alex Harmon is a technology manager at Blank Law + Technology. He manages the firm’s network and systems infrastructure and provides computer forensics and electronic discovery services.

By: Mark Marino

As the Electronic Data Extraction Network (EDEN) continues to grow in its first year, members and prospective members often ask how they can incorporate e-discovery into their businesses – a great question considering how relatively new e-discovery laws and trends are and how much electronically stored information (ESI) is generated on a daily basis.  Just looking at how inexpensive hard drives have become and how much data they can store these days, it is clear that ESI is taking over the workplace and paper is becoming a tool of the past.

An integral aspect of EDEN is education.  By learning more about the e-discovery process, members can see how costs are controlled and data is acquired and processed for legal matters and computer investigations.  EDEN members are encouraged to log into the Resources section of EDEN to access informative documents that can help those new to e-discovery.

For our IT members, educating your clients about your affiliation with EDEN and its access to a network of both legal and IT experts can help build your client’s awareness that you are a resource to turn to for help with e-discovery and investigations involving IT resources.

Reaching out to your clients about EDEN and e-discovery can also be an opportunity to help them assess their e-discovery preparedness.  Does your client have an electronic data back-up and retention plan in place?  Have they implemented data and IT use policies?  If the answer to these and other questions is a shrug or a no, you may have an opportunity to show how taking steps to address such issues now can not only make the e-discovery process easier, but a lot less expensive.

As with any group or network, member involvement expands and benefits the entire community.  EDEN representatives are happy to discuss any questions you may have or fill you in on the successes representative EDEN members have had with the community and their clients.

By: Cathy Lopez

We’re all familiar with those emergency checklists that are provided by the American Red Cross and other agencies. They include many practical tips for surviving disasters, such as: “identify two ways to escape from every room” and “consider purchasing escape ladders.”

Although these tips often seem like basic knowledge in the calm before the storm, taking the time to be sure you know them by heart can make an enormous difference in whether you survive and minimize both damage and recovery time.

As a Project Manager on e-discovery projects, I’ve provided “disaster relief” counseling for many clients in the midst of e-discovery emergencies. During the early stages of an e-discovery emergency, many clients may feel confused, pressured, and unsure about reasonable steps to protect electronic data.

Read more »

EDEN Standard No. 1: Information Technology Code of Conduct

The first standard presented by the Electronic Data Extraction Network (EDEN) includes 10 important rules for all IT professionals to follow.  If you missed the initial posting, check it out below.

——

EDEN is the first network of its kind: we are a national community of over 135 companies in the US and Canada.  We assess e-discovery best practices and standards from a technical perspective and offer training and references for hands-on technical work.

As part of EDEN’s ongoing work towards the establishment of technical standards for professionals working in the e-discovery industry, we will be drafting and presenting proposed technical standards at the beginning of each month.

As standards are finalized, they will be made available in the Resources portal www.edenhub.com.  We invite the e-discovery community to review, debate and comment on each of EDEN’s monthly standards.

——

Read more »

On November 17, 2009, Google quietly introduced the addition of a new search capability to its Google Scholar search engine: legal opinions and journals. Although somewhat limited in scope and functionality – and thus likely not a replacement for expensive paid services like WestLaw and Lexis – the new Google Scholar search capability and case law database are sure to be welcome new resources for casual researchers, pro se litigants, and attorneys in need of free legal research.

As with most Google services, the Google Scholar legal opinion and journal search feature has simple, but effective, functionality. Advanced search features are simple to understand and use. Importantly, a “How Cited” feature provides insight into how a given case has been referenced in other cases – an extremely useful feature that addresses one of the main elements lacking in many existing free case law databases.

Of course, there are limitations, some of which seem surprising given Google’s preeminence in search. For example, searches for state opinions may be limited to a particular state or group of states, but federal opinions can only be searched across all states.

Other limitations are not surprising. For example, although searches appear to cover law review articles, journals and other sources, full copies of the articles often reside behind fee walls.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the new Google Scholar feature is that the scope of its database is unclear. There is no indication of how often the database is updated. And while Google claims to provide “full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts,” early reports of test searches indicate that the availability of state appellate decisions below the “supreme court” level may be limited.

Despite its limitations, as a free service the new Google Scholar legal opinion and journal search feature is undoubtedly a step toward increasing accessibility to legal research. By addressing some of its limitations, Google Scholar will hopefully soon take a much bigger step in that direction.

By Charles T. Tsuji

The employee handbook is the staple of any human resources department.

In addition to the proper use of vacation time, 401(k) contribution information and mandatory arbitration clauses, many employee handbooks contain language informing employees that their company issued computers and email accounts are for work purposes only. Some handbooks even state that the company has the right to periodically review employee email.

These provisions are necessary to protect a company’s interest in its projects, clients and confidential information. Indeed, many courts have used these provisions to hold that an employee does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the use of their work computer.

Read more »

By C. Dean Little

Back when I got out of law school, the standard high-tech business equipment in a law firm was an IBM Selectrix typewriter and a photo copy machine.

At that time, secretaries embraced the Selectrix, but many resisted giving up their habit of making copies using carbon paper. A few years later, the Wang word processor revolutionized the office, eliminating typing by secretaries and centralizing it in a word processing department. Old habits and carbon paper died out, but the positive thing was that secretaries became “assistants” and, in law firms, “paralegals.”

In the mid-1970s, I had my first trial over the performance of the punched-tape readers on a client’s computer. In the late 1970s and early Eighties, law firms purchased refrigerator-sized computers to do invoicing and other simple functions.

Read more »