E-discovery trends should continue.

• Position: E-DISCOVERY

Last year saw many calls for reform of the e-discovery process, and they may get louder this year, experts say. The Duke Conference of the Federal Civil Rules Advisory Committee in May 2010 sparked much discussion when it offered proposals for uniform rules regarding electronically stored information (ESI) preservation and sanctions. The committee met again in November 2010, and legal experts are expecting concrete reforms to be proposed before its upcoming April 2011 meeting.

Other significant e-discovery trends in 2010 include:

* The overall frequency of courts granting sanctions declined substantially compared to 2009. (Sanctions were granted in 55% of the cases where sought in 2010; 70% in 2009.) Many courts evaluated sanctions requests more cautiously and demanded evidence that the missing documents would have been relevant and favorable to the party seeking sanctions.

* Courts did not look favorably on parties that failed to cooperate reasonably, with one court describing an e-discovery dispute as "the litigation equivalent of the cafeteria food fight scene in the infamous movie Animal House."

* Computer algorithms were used with increasing frequency for clustering, predictive coding, initial document culling, and other search technologies, offering some hope for decreasing the discovery burden and costs.

* Courts clarified...