There are a lot of stories lately about the way law enforcement is using social media to capture criminals. As might be expected, there’s a lot of dumb lawbreakers who are eager to incriminate themselves online. Apparently, a lot of small-time criminals just can’t help but brag about their illegal exploits on Facebook or Twitter. However,…
read moreLawmakers have a talent for confusing issues and scaring people unnecessarily. The current example is the proposed Cloud Computing Act of 2012. As Professor Eric Goldman at the Santa Clara University School of Law says of the Act, “I have no idea what problem this bill purports to solve.” The laws regarding criminal trespass in…
read moreFor many lawyers, eDiscovery is still an exotic, unfamiliar practice. Despite the growing number of conferences, publications, and CLE credits available to help lawyers understand the discovery of electronic evidence in litigation, most lawyers have never even sent a preservation letter, the first step in discovery. Considering that discovery of any electronic evidence is unfamiliar to most…
read moreDefending privileged documents in eDiscovery is not easy. (See our recent post, “Why Lawyers Are So Bad at Protecting Privilege.”) The right to private communication is vital to the practice of law, but, with the explosion of digital evidence in litigation, lawyers are finding it increasingly hard to protect every single piece of attorney-client work…
read moreIn theory, protecting your privileged attorney-client work product should be a straightforward and simple matter. In a new ruling out of Ohio, Inhalation Plastics, Inc. v. Medex Cardio-Pulmonary, Inc., (S.D. Ohio Aug. 28, 2012), all the defendants had to do was mark documents as confidential, and make sure not to produce them to opposing counsel.…
read moreBeing in the legal technology field can be frustrating. Technology changes fast but the law moves slowly, deliberately, and often in convoluted ways. You have to somehow stay ahead of the technology curve while waiting for the courts to catch up. It wasn’t until 2006 that federal courts were able to get the basic rules…
read moreAccording to last years’ Midlevel Associates Survey at Law.com, associates were excited about all of the new gadgets and software being made available to them. For a brief period, it seemed like new devices, software, and even the latest Windows upgrade might finally give overworked associates the technology they needed. Predictably, this year’s survey found…
read moreWhen lawyers are managing eDiscovery there are really just three things they need to know for every document – is it responsive, non responsive, or privileged. Responsive they give to opposing counsel, non-responsive they ignore, and privileged documents must be protected. Are lawyers bad at protecting attorney-client privilege? As the U.S. Supreme Court…
read moreIf it seems like there’s been a lot of eDiscovery sanctions lately, it’s not an illusion. The number of parties and lawyers being hit with sanctions and adverse inferences for eDiscovery failure are, in fact, on the rise. Obviously, sanctions are a bad thing, but it’s also a sign of maturity in the law. Last…
read moreIt’s hard to believe in 2012 that two terabytes of data storage is too much for anyone to handle, especially a government agency. But according to Law.com, the DEA is no longer pursuing extradition for drug charges against a doctor because it doesn’t want to bear the cost of storing that amount of case evidence.…
read more