E-Discovery has taken over the discovery process in civil litigation as most information created today is in electronic form. Every medium to large litigation matter in the country involves some e-discovery issue and therefore understanding e-discovery is critical whether you want to be a plaintiff or defense attorney or in house counsel.
This course will provide an understanding of the legal and practical aspects of e-discovery. It will cover all stages of the e-discovery process from when the duty to preserve electronically stored information (ESI) is triggered and a producing party must take reasonable steps to preserve ESI, to collection of ESI in response to requests for production, to review and production of relevant ESI to the opponent. The course will also focus on spoliation and proportionality and how producing parties struggle to balance complying with their preservation obligations with keeping costs down. Additionally, the course will cover how lawyers prepare for and handle Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 26(f) (and state equivalents) conferences and best practices for negotiating ESI protocols involving search terms, predictive coding and other e-discovery technology.