In the past year, I attended two high-level e-discovery conferences at which participants spoke of living in a "bubble," by which they meant a world where the e-discovery experts discussed the ramifications of new search and review technologies (think "predictive coding") or debated the implications of recent case law, without regard for the fact that most e-discovery matters do not involve millions of files or that, perhaps most importantly, most lawyers still have virtually no background in nor understanding of e-discovery. With these experiences in mind, I am going to try to avoid the columnist’s temptation to show how in the know I am by writing about the Next Big Thing, and will instead write about more basic, low-tech approaches to e-discovery issues. Today, I will explore a very basic idea: You save money in e-discovery production by having less to produce, and you will have less to produce if you know your case.
Before We Get Started
I will begin by quoting (again) Voltaire: "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Perfection is not the standard by which a production will be judged reasonableness is. The lawyer who can explain all steps taken and show that all were reasonable takes a defensible position and should prevail. Moreover, even if reasonable steps are second-guessed by a court, they will not result in sanctions.
