Philip Favro
September 18, 2019
Litigation readiness is an essential step for parties who wish to be prepared for the electronic discovery process. While significant for the production phase of discovery, litigation readiness has proven indispensable for helping clients preserve relevant electronically stored information (ESI). This is particularly the case under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), which generally safeguards parties from sanctions who have implemented and followed litigation readiness measures.
July 11, 2019
Slack is a popular cloud-based team collaboration and messaging platform used by a wide variety of organizations. Similar to other messaging platforms that have grown in popularity, Slack is unknown to many counsel and courts. Nevertheless, content from Slack is increasingly being sought by parties in discovery. A lack of knowledge about Slack or similar technology can lead to complications with preservation, collection, and production. This is apparent from two recent court cases that addressed failures to produce relevant messages from Slack.
June 20, 2019
Cross-border data protection laws are increasingly affecting domestic U.S. discovery proceedings. Globalization has placed discoverable information beyond the boundaries of the U.S. and has often forced litigants to satisfy those laws in order to produce or obtain such information. To meet the challenges of foreign data protection laws, organizations will need to be prepared. As spotlighted in a recent article published by LegalTech News, this includes more effective information governance programs and litigation readiness measures, along with better advocacy on the issues in court.
May 21, 2019
WeChat is an increasingly widespread communication platform whose content is being sought with growing frequency by parties to U.S. litigation. Despite its growing ubiquity, many lawyers either know nothing about WeChat or are not advising clients to preserve and produce relevant WeChat communications in discovery. Failing to do so can be damaging or even disastrous to a party’s claims or defenses. This is evident from the number of recent court cases addressing discovery of relevant WeChat messages and imposing sanctions for preservation or production failures.