Exterro Inc. held a live e-discovery webcast Wednesday, on the topic du jour—or should we say, du année—the pending amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure regarding electronic data discovery that were just greenlighted by the Judicial Conferences' Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure.
The presentation featured three federal judges: Magistrate Judge James Francis of the Southern District of New York, Judge Paul Grimm of Maryland and Chief Magistrate Judge John Ott of the Northern District of Alabama. Scott Giordano, corporate technology counsel at Exterro, moderated the presentation (which offered continuing legal education in several states.
The explosion of electronic information has caused EDD costs to skyrocket, said Francis. “The new amendments are designed to provide more certainty and tightened standards with respects to electronic discovery,” he said,
And the costs aren't pennies. Allstate Corp. spent more than $17 million on EDD costs within the last five years; General Electric Co. houses more than 4.5 terabytes of e-mail data, Giordano said. In 2011 GE incurred $5.5 million in fees to collect and preserve 3.5 million documents for one case, he noted.
Polling attendees has become somewhat of a fad on legal webinars and at live conferences. (Frequent speaker Patrick Oot, general counsel of the non-profit E-Discovery Institute and a partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon, is a highly visible connoisseur of the technology.) Exterro invited the audience of about 166 to particpate in polling during the one-hour session. Attendees were asked to gauge the potential effectiveness of the proposed amendments, and to predict what amended rule would potentially have the biggest impact on EDD. (About 80 to 90 percent of attendees typically participate in the voting process, observed Deborah Caldwell, Exterro's communcations director.)
Poll Results:
• Which e-discovery amendment will have the biggest effect on the e-discovery practice at your organization? Rule 26(b)(1), addressing proportionality, came in first place with 50 percent of the votes. Rule 37(e), revising ED sanctions, claimed 38 percent of the votes. Rule 1, dealing with cooperation, drew 12 percent.
• How effective do you think the amendment to Rule 1 will be? 50 percent: “No effect;” 45 percent expect it will be “beneficial;” 6 percent: “very beneficial.” “I’m heartened to see that nobody thought it was negative,” joked Francis. A dominant 70 percent said rule 26(b)(1) would be “beneficial,” two other categories both got 14 percent: “very beneficial” and "no effect." A lonely 1 percent predicted a “negative” impact. “I think that’s encouraging,” Ott observed.
Mark Gerlachis a staff reporter for Law Technology News.
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