Blog entry by Mark Reichenbach posted on On the Mark, October 23, 2007:

The EDRM today announced the release of a standard XML format to be used in the exchange of electronic data between applications. The industry has long needed this standard and it’s a good thing. Let me tell you why.

You could look at this as a “Universal Load File” — a very useful thing for corporations with disparate systems and service providers who must support them.  I’d look for this XML format to be helpful to opposing parties who must “meet and confer” under the FRCP for their 26(f) conferences as far as agreeing on a particular data load file format….

Blog entry by Rees Morrison posted on Law Department Management, October 24, 2007:

A previous post mentioned the received wisdom that “70-80 percent of litigation costs are for discovery” (See my posts of Aug. 5, 2005 for the quote; Aug. 24, 2005 for estimates of pages per executive; and May 13, 2007 on the immensity of documents generated each year….

Blog entry by Aaref Hilaly and Kurt Leafstrand posted on e-discovery 2.0, October 23, 2007:

Prior to working in e-discovery, I (Aaref) always thought standards bodies were a waste of time – or, at least, nothing more than an excuse for free travel to exotic locations. But George Socha and Tom Gelbmann’s EDRM project has changed my mind. In the second of a series of posts, our e-discovery guru – Kurt Leafstrand – explains one of many ways in which EDRM will have a big impact on e-discovery in the years to come:

Last week, I once again had the pleasure of participating in the (now biannual) EDRM conference in St. Paul, Minnesota. For those unfamiliar with it, EDRM is a fantastic collaboration between e-discovery software vendors, service providers, and consumers committed to addressing practical problems associated with e-discovery….

Blog entry by Ralph Losey posted on e-Discovery Team, October 6, 2007:

A new survey of records managers by Cohasset reveals continued neglect in the management of electronic records. The survey shows 40% of organizations do not include electronic records in their retention schedules and 55% do not include emails; only 14% always follow their records retention policy; 44% do not include electronic records in their litigation hold procedures; and, 46% do not think their electronic records are accurate, reliable or trustworthy. 

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Blog entry by Graig Rhinehart posted on ZDNet, October 2, 2007:  Commentary–Is your company’s record-keeping adequate or is it a digital landfill? With new laws and compliance regulations weighing heavily on organizational policies and procedures, many companies are waking up to find out they have lost control of their content. The fact is most organizations are unprepared to address the reality of the growing compliance challenge.

Gone are the days when old files were merely put in a box and hauled over to a warehouse. Many of today’s compliance regulations call for some form of structured electronic recordkeeping. Everything from e-mails to instant messages to voicemails is now carefully maintained by organizations, so they can hand over records and e-mails, when necessary, for a government audit or litigation.

For businesses of all sizes, sucessful records management requires systematically applying a consistent process across an enterprise. This means designing and implementing a procedure that can preserve the integrity and trustworthiness of records across the enterprise….

Blog entry posted by Ralph Losey on e-Discovery Team, September 16, 2007:

The Sedona Conference has just released its Best Practices Commentary on the Use of Search and Information Retrieval Methods in E-Discovery (August 2007) for public comments. A copy may be downloaded for personal use. This Best Practices Commentary, like all of the Sedona publications, was written by a committee of expert members of The Sedona Conference, who agreed upon the content and wording. This particular group is called the “Search and Retrieval Sciences Project Team.” Writings by committee are usually an invitation for disaster, but Sedona consistently manages to pull it off, and do a first rate job, primarily, I think, because of the quality of their editors. The Editor-in-Chief for the Search Team is Jason Baron, about whom I have written several times previously, along with Executive Editors Richard Braman and Kenneth Withers, and Senior Editors Thomas Allman, James Daley and George Paul….

Blog entry by Aaref Hilaly posted on e-discovery 2.0, September 27, 2007:

In my experience, e-discovery does not make the radar screen of most corporate General Counsels (GCs). Typically, it is one many issues left to others (e.g., Chief of Litigation, Director of Litigation Support) within the GC’s group. That may change after the recent verdict in the case of Broadcom vs. Qualcomm.

See below for the story, as told by Corporate Counsel in their October issue, with additional commentary from me [added in brackets]…

Blog entry posted on e-Discovery Team, September 23, 2007:

The Sedona Conference has done it again and group-written two more excellent guides: one on Legal Holds, and the other on Email Management. Both were just released for public comment and may be downloaded from the Sedona website for personal use….

Blog entry by Ron Gula posted on Tenable Network Security, August 29, 2007:

There are many consultants that use Nessus to scan a customer network for vulnerabilities and report a laundry list of security issues which need to be fixed. Another valuable service that can be performed by a consultant is to audit where sensitive data resides in an organization and what sort of access can be gained to it. This blog entry discusses what can be accomplished with the Nessus scanner and what additional types of data analysis can be performed with the sensitive content checks available with the Nessus Direct Feed….

Blog entry by Sabrina Pacifici posted on be Spacific, August 18, 2007:

Materials from PLL Programs at AALL 2007 - The Challenge of Electronic Discovery: How Reference Service, Records Management and Litigation Support Interact, Speakers: John Montaña, Esq., PelliGroup, Inc. and Rachelle L. DeGregory, Esq., LexisNexis [PowerPoint document]