It should be old news by now. so-called e-discovery, the production of electronic documents in litigation, is an integral part of litigation today, and a billion-dollar industry. Everyone knows that e-mails can be, at the least, embarrassing, and at most, incriminating. To in-house lawyers, keeping on top of their companies’ digital trove of documents should by now be just another customary part of the job.
But surveys show that e-discovery is still a vexing problem. Corporations have sprawling, unwieldy computer networks, with thousands of employees sending e-mails that talk about everything from the next sales conference to how a new drug can cause problems. And e-mails like that are leading to big plaintiffs awards.
