Doing Justice to Justice: e-Discovery Reform Part 3

http://ow.ly/6HgRh

A blog post from BLLAWG, at  blog.liquidlitigation.com.

The article provides information regarding recent efforts to limit the scope of eDiscovery requests in order to reduce costs.  As the blog post states, "The group Lawyers for Civil Justice published their opinions on current attempts at e-discovery reform and did not hold back their frustration. LCJ insists that the scope of required discovery must be greatly narrowed in order to start solving today’s extensive discovery problems."

The blog post goes on to state, "Lawyers for Civil Justice has proposed four ideas that they feel would greatly help the dire state of today’s e-discovery standards.
1. Limit the scope of discovery to non-privileged data that gives clear proof of a claim or defense.
2. Define categories and sources of electronically stored information (ESI) that can be exempted from discovery or considered “not reasonably accessible.”
3. Explicitly state discovery requirements in the proportionality rule.
4. Limit requests to 25 productions, 10 custodians, and a two year period prior to the complaint."

A concluding statement is offered as follows, "We can all agree that better defined discovery guidelines are in great need, but are 25 productions and two years of data enough to do all matters justice?"

P.S.  This writers of this blog feel that technological advancements will be the real solution to this issue.  The answer to concerns regarding eDiscovery productions is to address the attorney review costs, and to use technology to enhance the review process, and reduce the costs associated with the review...not limit the ability to find evidence that is relevant to the case.  While proportionality in discovery request should certainly play a factor, artificial caps on what evidence can be requested simply make no sense.