eDiscovery Trends: Sedona Conference Provides Guidance for Judges

http://ow.ly/6HCSm

An article by Jason Krause posted on the eDiscovery Daily Blog.

The article states, "Last month, The Sedona Conference® made a public comments version of the Cooperation Proclamation: Resources for the Judiciary available on the Sedona Conference website. The Sedona Conference Cooperation Proclamation has set a non-trivial goal- to teach the profession to collaborate during the discovery process instead of the traditional gladiatorial style of litigation. The Resources for the Judiciary document aims to provide judges with a foundation for creating a collaborative and non-adversarial approach to managing eDiscovery."

The article provides a link the available resources on the Sedona Conference site.

The article states, "The Resources make the following recommendations:

• Judges should adopt a “hands-on” approach to case management early in each action;
• Judges should establish deadlines and keep parties to those guidelines (or make reasonable adjustments) with periodic status reports or conferences;
• Judges should encourage the parties to meet before discovery commences to develop a realistic discovery plan;
• Judges should encourage proportionality in preservation demands and expectations and in discovery requests and responses;
• Judges should exercise their discretion to limit or condition disproportionate discovery and shift disproportionate costs;
• If necessary, judges should exercise their authority to issue sanctions under the relevant statutes, rules, or the exercise of inherent authority on counsel or parties who create unnecessary costs or delay, or who otherwise frustrate the goals of discovery by “gaming the system”."

 

The author further points out, "The Sedona Conference has acknowledged that cooperation is contrary to the adversarial instincts lawyers have been taught, and that it will require a generational shift for the nature of litigation to change. But there is perhaps no better way to encourage lawyers to cooperate than to create and active and informed judiciary on eDiscovery issues."