Link to article by Sheri Qualtersposted on Law.com, January 15, 2008:  Settlement agreement reached via e-mail is upheld

A recent Massachusetts Appeals Court ruling enforcing an e-mail settlement agreement of a contractual dispute is a reminder to lawyers that e-mail settlements carry the same weight as deals on paper.

The court ruled on Jan. 7 that a midtrial, e-mail settlement between Basis Technology Corp., a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that makes software for multilingual Web sites, and e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. was binding….

Link to article by Anthony Lin posted on Law.com, January 10, 2008:

Sullivan & Cromwell has taken its legal battle with Electronic Evidence Discovery Inc. (EED) to state Supreme Court in Manhattan while the Kirkland, Wa.-based e-discovery vendor has filed its own lawsuit against the New York law firm in state court in Seattle….

Mentions: Electronic Evidence Discovery, Inc. - web site | Socha Consulting listing

Link to article by Zusha Elinson and Dan Levine posted on Law.com, January 8, 2007:  Long-awaited ruling refers lawyers from Day Casebeer and Heller to Bar for ethics investigation of Qualcomm discovery dispute

Six attorneys in the Qualcomm Inc. discovery fiasco were sanctioned Monday for “monumental” discovery violations and referred to the State Bar of California for possible discipline.

Day Casebeer Madrid & Batchelder attorneys James Batchelder, Adam Bier, Kevin Leung, Christian Mammen and Lee Patch, and Heller Ehrman’s Stanley Young were sanctioned and harshly criticized by U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Major in a 42-page order. The ruling follows a patent infringement trial Qualcomm had brought against Broadcom Corp….

Link to article by Anthony Lin posted on Law.com, January 7, 2007:  Other lawyers predict similar disputes in future between law firms and EDD companies

Sullivan & Cromwell has sued an electronic discovery company for allegedly missing deadlines and preparing the wrong documents for production in the course of a major litigation.

In a complaint filed Dec. 28, 2007, in the Southern District of New York, Sullivan & Cromwell said, “untimely and inaccurate” work by Electronic Evidence Discovery Inc. (EED) hindered the law firm’s staffing arrangements and caused it to expend extra resources on discovery. The firm asked for a ruling that EED was not entitled to collect $710,000 in outstanding bills….

Link to article by Conrad J. Jacoby posted in LLRX.com, December 29, 2007:

Many e-discovery commentators have described 2007 as “the year that changed litigation,” thanks to amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that (1) required counsel to discuss specific logistical details concerning the discovery of electronically stored information (“ESI”) in the first 60-90 days of the case; and (2) strongly encouraged courts to specifically include ESI management in their case management orders. As support for the importance of 2007, commentators point to the large number of highly visible court orders and opinions issued in the past year that interpret these new requirements and apply them to specific situations. They also point to a range of polls and surveys that show that in-house counsel is paying much closer attention to ESI preservation and e discovery budget issues than they have in the past.

Still, for all these well-publicized activities, how much did the average litigation practice change in 2007? A contrarian could argue that, amended Rules or not, 2007 was much more of a continuation of past litigation practices than a radical beginning in a new e-discovery-aware world order….

Link to article by Charlotte Riser Harris and Don Swanson posted on Litigation Support Today, November 2007:

In the world of e-discovery there are two distinct teams - the legal team and the technical team - with two distinct perspectives.  The technical team includes litigation support personnel and legal technology providers.  The legal team includes attorneys and paralegals.  These teams share goals.   The goals are to get through the discovery stage of litigation as completely, quickly, efficiently, and painlessly as possible, while achieving the best possible result for their litigation client….

Link to article by Kelly D. Talcott posted on Law.com, December 19, 2007:

For many of us, George Orwell’s “1984″ was required reading at some point during our formative years. The picture it painted of a world where privacy was virtually nonexistent and the consequences faced by an individual who dared to oppose the system provoked in many of us an almost instinctive reaction against such a totalitarian exercise of raw authority.

In the 23 years since the actual year 1984 came and went — happily with few of the horrors envisioned by Mr. Orwell when he finished the novel back in 1948 coming to pass — we have allowed our privacy to seep away. Instead of ceding control of our private information to a single all-powerful regime, however, we dole it out in bits and pieces to a diffuse network of eager information-gatherers, many if not most of them in the private sector….

Link to article by Janet H. Kwuon and Karen Wan posted on Law.com, December 14, 2007:

Much ink has been spilled about the demands of discovery in the current technological age. The storage of electronic data, the existence of metadata and the wholesale migration from printed hard copy documents to electronic documents have challenged all practitioners, particularly those trained in discovery during the era of banker’s boxes and hard copy documents. The 2006 e-discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, along with other standard-setting rules, have raised the stakes. In fact, in the current climate, given the interplay between ethical obligations and standards for professional conduct and these e-discovery requirements, attorneys may be surprised to learn that inattention to e-discovery may not only work to the detriment of clients — it may lead to professional malpractice or the imposition of sanctions on counsel. If any doubt remained, the ongoing discovery dispute in the Qualcomm v. Broadcom case, discussed below, should eliminate it….

Article of interview with Afshin Behnia , President & CEO, Mitratech; Tom Klaff , CEO, Surety LLC; Dan Lucky , Vice President-Data Management Solutions and David Gaines , Vice President- Security, Microstrategies, Inc.; Bettina Tweardy Riveros , Associate General Counsel and Director of Product Development, Corporation Service Company (CSC); Karen Schuler , Vice President of Consulting, ONSITE3; Debra E. Weaver, Vice President-Marketing & Sales, TrialNet, Inc., posted on The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, December 2007:

Editor: What legal trends in 2007 had the greatest impact on law departments’ technology solutions?

Behnia: On December 1, 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) took effect, requiring US organizations to address issues regarding electronically stored evidence at the outset of litigation. Rule 37(f) grants organizations a safe harbor for data destruction when it is due to routine operations and done in good faith - but this rule also requires that, at a minimum, organizations integrate legal hold procedures into their systematized frameworks….

Link to article by Brett Burney posted on Law.com, December 12, 2007:

All litigation support software gives you essentially the same thing — a searchable database to host documents and analytical information related to a litigation matter.

The legal world has come to expect a standard set of tools in litigation support software. Every review platform provides a way to import, view, search, sort, filter, tag, code, redact, export and produce documents from a central database. Since you can find these tools in practically any litigation software, manufacturers usually resort to adding extraneous features in their products to differentiate themselves in the marketplace….