Employment E-discovery - It's Time to Learn it Plain and Simple!
| Publication year | 2020 |
| Author | By Sabrina L. Green |
By Sabrina L. Green
Sabrina L. Green is a managing partner of Stratton & Green, ALC and focuses on labor & employment, complex business litigation. Besides being the Chair of the California Lawyers Association Solo and Small Firm executive committee, member of the CLA Board of Representatives, she is the Attorney Coordinator for the Thomas Jefferson School of Law Employee Rights Public Clinic, member of the executive committee for the Thomas Jefferson Alumni Board of Directors, Vice President of Executive Women's Council and a member of the Board of Directors of the Hong Kong Business Association of Southern California, San Diego. Sabrina can be reached at sgreen@sglawcorp.com.
Iknow, I know...how many articles have you seen with this caption and turned the page or kept on scrolling? Stop! No time like the present to learn. This overview will be quick and virtually painless. Whether you are on the plaintiff or defense side of an employment litigation matter (or any litigation matter), you need to be thinking about your e-discovery plan. There are by far too many attorneys that simply avoid e-discovery entirely because they do not understand it. This article seeks to provide the simple basics of e-discovery to help you and your case.
If you are a practicing California litigator and don't know e-discovery by now, you may already be afoul of your ethical duties. Electronically stored information (ESI), references all information stored in computers and digital storage devices. This ESI includes voicemails, emails, text messages, instant messages, videos including surveillance, and ALL social media communications.1
The following definitions are essential to competently discussing e-discovery with opposing counsel and request/respond to it competently.
Active Data — The information that is readily available and accessible to users, including word processing files, spreadsheets, databases' data, e-mail messages, electronic calendars, and contact managers.2
Back Up Data — Data that describes how, when, and by whom a particular set of data was created, edited, formatted, and processed. Access to metadata provides important evidence, such as blind copy (bcc) recipients, the date a file or email message was created and/or modified, and other similar information. Such information is lost when an electronic document is converted to paper form for production.3
True native— Files that are copies of the original documents in the format created by the authoring application, like DOC or XLS. Metadata should be intact, if preserved properly. This is what most parties have in mind when asking for native production.
Near native formats— Produces the data with as much original information as possible in a different, often more easily accessible file type. This...
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