Managing e-discovery is complex enough in English, with cases such as Victor Stanley Inc. v. Creative Pipe Inc. emphasizing the dangers of failing to maintain and document defensible production methods. When a matter involves global business with electronically stored information (ESI) in multiple languages, the problems multiply. In-house counsel involved in multinational e-discovery must deal with a host of technical issues as well as legal complications in foreign jurisdictions.
E-discovery companies are scrambling to present solutions, establish overseas operations to meet demand and develop technologies to enable collection, processing, review and production of multilingual data as the need becomes more pressing. Multilingual e-discovery is even developing its own jargon, including LOTE to refer collectively to “languages other than English,” and CJK to refer to Chinese, Japanese and Korean–languages with special characters that offer unique challenges.
