What is ediscovery, e-discovery or electronic discovery?

“Electronic discovery has been described as the “process of identifying, preserving, collecting, processing, searching, reviewing, and producing Electronically Stored Information that may be relevant to a civil, criminal, or regulatory matter.” Maura R. Grossman and Gordon V. Cormack, The Grossman-Cormack Glossary of Technology-Assisted Review, Vol. 7 Federal Courts Law Review 2013 1, 15 (2013); Junk v. Aon Corp., No. 07-4640, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 89741, at *2 n.2 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 30, 2007) (“E-Discovery is the disclosure or discovery of electronically stored information, including the form or forms in which it should be produced …”).” Arkfeld on Electronic Discovery and Evidence § 7.1

eDiscovery training and Instruction certification

Wikipedia - “Electronic discovery (also e-discovery or ediscovery) refers to discovery in legal proceedings such as litigation, government investigations, or Freedom of Information Act requests, where the information sought is in electronic format (often referred to as electronically stored information or ESI).[1] Electronic discovery is subject to rules of civil procedure and agreed-upon processes, often involving review for privilege and relevance before data are turned over to the requesting party. Electronic information is considered different from paper information because of its intangible form, volume, transience and persistence. Electronic information is usually accompanied by metadata that is not found in paper documents and that can play an important part as evidence (e.g. the date and time a document was written could be useful in a copyright case). The preservation of metadata from electronic documents creates special challenges to prevent spoliation. In the United States, at the federal level, electronic discovery is governed by common law, case law, specific statutes, but primarily by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), including amendments effective December 1, 2006, and December 1, 2015.[2][3] In addition, state law and regulatory agencies increasingly frequently also addresses issues relating to electronic discovery. Other jurisdictions around the world also have rules relating to electronic discovery, including Part 31 of the Civil Procedure Rules in England and Wales.”

eDiscovery Education Center (www.edec.com) provides instructional and training content to the legal community in the areas of eDiscovery, digital evidence and forensics, and data analytics. Preservation, discovery, production, and admissibility of evidence has changed dramatically. It is important that the eDiscovery team uniformly learn about eDiscovery to assist and protect your clients and yourself.

“Litigation is transforming as the world transitions to the 'digital' information age. Preservation, discovery, production, and admissibility of evidence has changed dramatically. Now is the time for your eDiscovery team to uniformly learn about eDiscovery to assist and protect your clients and yourself.” – Michael Arkfeld

We firmly believe that your entire eDiscovery team and organization (attorneys, paralegals, litigation and IT support staff, and other legal professionals) who "touch" eDiscovery matters should have access to the same testing and eDiscovery training and instructional content. For this reason, we have designed our courses and low subscription rates for a group (law firm, government unit, corporate office, etc.) for all EDEC on-demand instructional content which includes a team eDiscovery assessment. The test is separated into legal and IT issues that will arise in your cases. Every litigator and person in your organization who "touches" a matter involving "electronically stored information" should take a "basic" eDiscovery course. Often, I hear of stories of legal professionals, for example, who fail to recognize "triggering" legal hold events and the ensuing court sanctions that follow.

Depending How Your eDiscovery Team is "structured" and the different team member roles will be factors in choosing a particular eDiscovery training or course. This course readings for the "ESI Pretrial Discovery: Critical Issues, Strategy and Tactics" course (both basic and advanced) are from the "Arkfeld's Best Practices Guide - Arkfeld's Best Practices Guide for ESI Pretrial Discovery" (approximate cost $98). This course readings for the "Information Technology (IT) for Legal Professionals" course (both basic and advanced) are from the "Arkfeld's Best Practices Guide - Information Technology (IT) for Legal Professionals" (approximate cost $98). The "Master" course is supplemented by the Arkfeld' on Electronic Discovery and Evidence treatise and four Best Practices Guides. After the discount, the cost of the publications is approximately $250.

You may already have these publications available through your organization's Lexis Advance online legal research subscription or they may be in your library. To save 30% on the individual best practice guides (approximately $98 after the discount) or the entire set of publications including the Arkfeld on Electronic Discovery and Evidence (4th ed.) treatise and the four Best Practice Guides (approximately $250 after the discount). please reference or enter promotion code: 2020EDEC30.

To order visit the LexisNexis® Store at http://www.lexisnexis.com/2020EDEC30. If you have further questions, call 800.223.1940 to speak with a LexisNexis® account representative. If you are already a subscriber to Lexis Advance, you may already have access to all of the publications for this course without the need to purchase them. Check with your librarian.
How does electronic evidence differ from paper evidence?

Digitized information takes on quite different characteristics from paper evidence. ESI is handled differently and in many ways, contains information of greater value than paper information. Always remember that ESI is not just text or data, but also includes audio, video and graphics.

• Informal Nature
Because of its informal nature, email and text messaging has encouraged senders to write unguarded, unwise, and often, inappropriate comments. This informal nature of comments also applies to word-processing documents that have been revised by one or many authors.

• Metadata/Hidden Evidence
Electronic data files contain metadata, hidden data, or embedded data. Metadata is additional, and often valuable, information about the electronic data file, which does not appear on a printed copy of the electronic file. Metadata is found in email messages, word-processing documents, spreadsheets, audio, video and all other computer files. In word-processing documents, it may contain prior revisions, dates of revisions, authors, and other information.

• Preservation
Litigants have an obligation to preserve electronic evidence and prevent its spoliation when litigation is “reasonably anticipated.” However, ESI can be changed, overwritten, or obliterated by normal everyday use. The simple acts of booting up a computer, opening a file, failing to suspend an auto-delete retention procedure, adding new data onto a hard disk, or running a routine maintenance program on a network can alter or destroy existing data without the user’s knowledge.

• Searching ESI
Computer-based ESI is easier to search than paper documents and provides a lower cost for retrieving and managing case information. One critical feature that distinguishes ESI from paper is that information contained in an electronic format can be searched for specific words, phrases, concepts, dates, or documents and the results can be retrieved instantaneously. In addition, new search techniques, such as “predictive coding,” can be applied since, generally, it will save cost and time. “Predictive coding” describes the integration of technology into the process of human document review. Predictive coding is the electronic coding, organization, and prioritization of ESI, by lawyers specifying relevant criteria, to identify responsive, privileged, and other documents during the discovery process.

• Volume
The large, and ever increasing, volume of ESI generated during contemporary business and government operations raises serious challenges and risks to the cost of locating, reviewing for privileges, and producing information. This is unlike paper-based discovery where the physical nature of paper, folders, and file cabinets limits the amount of paper that is printed and stored.

• Deletion
It is a myth that deleting a computer file, such as a word-processing document, will cause it to be destroyed. When a computer user pushes the delete key to erase a document, he or she is not destroying the document data, but instead merely removing the pointer or computer address of the document. The data remains until it is overwritten by new data, reformatted, or deletion software is applied.

• Storage Locations
One of the most challenging issues involved in eDiscovery is pinpointing the physical location of ESI. ESI can be stored on devices, ranging from pen drives (resembling a small ballpoint pen) to cloud computing and mainframe computers. This is dissimilar from paper-based discovery, where file cabinets, folders, and documents are generally located in specific physical locations. Searching and locating ESI in a modern, distributed business/government computing environment can be a challenging task.

• Disorganization
ESI is disorganized. It is the exception for ESI to be stored accurately in directories, subdirectories, and folders. Generally, since ESI can be found by searching for specific words or other data, users tend to store ESI in various unrelated computer systems or directories.

• Redundancy Archived and Backup Copies
ESI is constantly and consistently being backed up or archived to ensure recovery in the event of loss of data or a disaster. It is commonplace to backup important computer information on a daily, weekly, monthly, or other periodic basis.

• Destroying, Concealing, Altering, or Protecting ESI
ESI, such as a word-processing document, image, audio recording, graphic, or video recording can be destroyed, concealed, altered, or protected in ways that are difficult to detect without using computer forensic techniques.

• Alterations
Alterations to electronic documents are sometimes difficult to detect, if not impossible.

• Compound Documents and ESI
Usually we think of an electronic file as constituting all the information about a document. This may be true in some instances, such as in a memo or a spreadsheet. However, in some cases, an electronic document may be composed of information stored in different electronic files, such as a distributed database, which may even be located on different servers in different parts of the country.