and the one today of a Christmas Poem written by one of our military members.
Posted on 12/01/2006 12:06:21 AM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. companies will need to keep track of all the e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees thanks to new federal rules that go into effect Friday, legal experts say.
The rules, approved by the Supreme Court in April, require companies and other entities involved in federal litigation to produce "electronically stored information" as part of the discovery process, when evidence is shared by both sides before a trial.
The change makes it more important for companies to know what electronic information they have and where. Under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing the equivalent of "virtual shredding," said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert on technology and litigation.
James Wright, director of electronic discovery at Halliburton Co. (HAL) (HAL), said that large companies are likely to face higher costs from organizing their data to comply with the rules. In addition to e-mail, companies will need to know about things more difficult to track, like digital photos of work sites on employee cell phones and information on removable memory cards, he said.
Both federal and state courts have increasingly been requiring the production of relevant electronic documents during discovery, but the new rules codify the practice, legal experts said.
The rules also require that lawyers provide information about where their clients' electronic data is stored and how accessible it is much earlier in a lawsuit than was previously the case.
There are hundreds of "e-discovery vendors" and these businesses raked in approximately $1.6 billion in 2006, Wright said. That figure could double in 2007, he added.
Another expense will likely stem from the additional time lawyers will have to spend reviewing electronic documents before turning them over to the other side. While the amount of data will be narrowed by electronic searches, some high-paid lawyers will still have to sift through casual e-mails about subjects like "office birthday parties in the pantry" in order to find information relevant to a particular case.
Martha Dawson, a partner at the Seattle-based law firm of Preston Gates & Ellis LLP who specializes in electronic discovery, said the burden of the new rules won't be that great.
Companies will not have to alter how they retain their electronic documents, she said, but will have to do an "inventory of their IT system" in order to know better where the documents are.
The new rules also provide better guidance on how electronic evidence is to be handled in federal litigation, including guidelines on how companies can seek exemptions from providing data that isn't "reasonably accessible," she said. This could actually reduce the burden of electronic discovery, she said.
never put anything in writing when you can make a phone call, and never make a phone call when you can say it face to face.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
And never say anything you wouldn't want played back to you while you sit on the stand in front of a jury.
I can see that companies will have to start having strict rules against casual emails (jokes, stories and funny pictures) sent by employees.
Even with falling memory prices and more and more advanced compression software the huge amounts of employee generated junk mail will cost a great deal of money to store indefinitely.
At least a quarter of the email I get at work is non work related junk sent by fellow employees.
electronic mail should have meant great gains in efficiency and productivity for US.
Thank you trial lawyers for taking this important business tool away and reducing it to a medium for unimportant drivel.
Thank You Trial Lawyers, Thank You.
I say it a little differently: If you wouldn't say it in church then don't say it or write it anywhere else.
The mods seem to get PMS from time to time. I think it depends on who's in the chair at the time. They rarely have a sense of humor or even participate on their own site. And when a comment is pulled, no one ever knows why.
What gets me is walking by a few dozen cubicles with people surfing the internet. I have some of my clients ban that crap.
CNN material must be excerpted. The defense costs for the next copyright lawsuit that comes in can be funded by you two.
Thanks,
Jim
A lot of people totally abuse this "business tool," and play poker and plan their vacations on company time.
and the one today of a Christmas Poem written by one of our military members.
The problem at that time was that firms were not migrating their info to new systems as they acquired them, so that sometimes they were unable to retrieve the material. At first courts held that if you couldn't retrieve it, you got a pass. Then courts held that you better be able to retrieve it. It's your info, on your system, you pull it up.
The practioner's view at the time was to purge on schedule and the courts wouldn't complain and you'd have the excuse that you no longer have the documents. I haven't followed this stuff for awhile, but it looks like things have changed again.
I knew someone who worked for a univ that had email pretty much from its inception. He had email going back years that the univ never purged. When he was involved as a witness, not even a party, to a suit against the university, all of his email was retrieved - every note to the wife, every comment, joke, criticism about another, etc that had been made for many years - had to be reviewed by lawyers to look for emails that might be relevant to the suit. Jeez.
Big Brother is here.
That's for sure! In fact, it's not even realistic; not that reality ever stopped the government from passing a law.
Consider the complications of accessing an email system, such as a private email account, stored on a non-business machine, but using your office computer to do so. In that case, any emails sent or received would not even use the company's incoming or outgoing (SMTP) mail servers.
If a company is now responsible for tracking something like this, they would also have to track postings to forums, such as F/R, since they constitute a form of communication between persons.
What!?!? You mean starting today, when I'm ordering ammo and surfing gun sites at work ... they will be spying on me!!! They will be recording every site I go to!!??!!
How unfair!!!! Damn Government!!!!!
"I think it will get very complicated....It's easy to make new rules but to fully implement may be impossible."
You should see what's happening in the financial services industry. Almost everything you mentioned is being done to meet Sarbanes-Oxley compliance requirements and to avoid the problems of Goldman Sachs (IIRC it was Goldman that had the problems with analysts and traders?).
Everything is locked-down, everything is archived (seven years), nothing goes through that shouldn't go through. Even Web activity logs are archived.
You could game the system if you tried hard enough, but the systems also are being monitored 7x24 so it's a big risk to take if you're an employee. Why bother?
It's smarter to simply play by the rules, avoid excessive web surfing, and use your company email for business and nothing else.
you could have told me that in person, you know
Absolutely true. What far too many people forget about email is that it makes a complete, virtually undeletable record of all email communications about any given subject, a record that can always be discovered. The only way to use it safely to assume that your worst enemy is going to gain access to it and use it against you and not put anything in an email you're not willing to have him obtain.
Way back when, I just encrypted any message that was none of the firms business . . . or more correctly, I encrypted an attachment as I was forbidden from encrypting my messages.
Sounds like meetings at your church might be a little boring.
Thank You Trial Lawyers, Thank You.
Ah, yes...it is all the fault of trial lawyers. In fact, this new rule stems from two cases: One involving Morgan Stanley in FL, and one involving UBS in NY. In both cases, the companies were trying to hide discoverable information and plead ignorance.
In fact, this new rule just clarifies the existing rule, which requires a party to litigation to retain discoverable material. But that doesn't make for good headlines....
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