Whitepapers
The EU AI Act: Practical Steps to Prepare
On March 13, 2024, the European Parliament approved the EU Artificial Intelligence Act. In this whitepaper, we give a high-level overview of the Act and set out the practical steps an organization needs to undertake to prepare and to assess whether the Act will apply to them.
When the Bough Breaks: Spoliation in eDiscovery
Enormous volumes and diverse types of ESI may be relevant to a case, and this can make identification and preservation challenging. It is almost inevitable that some ESI will slip through the cracks. When that happens, FRCP 37(e) provides the framework for assessing the loss and its consequences.
Everything in Moderation: Proportionality in Discovery
The 2015 amendments to the FRCP brought proportionality front and center in an attempt to combat the runaway cost and scale of eDiscovery. Courts and parties have since increased their focus on proportionality as a discovery limit. This whitepaper discusses proportionality, the key factors courts consider, and other issues.
Beyond the Four Corners: Evolving Electronic Documents
The definition and boundaries of “document” are changing, as new source and file types proliferate and custodian behavior changes. New challenges abound, like modern attachments, dynamic content, endless threads, and more. This paper reviews these new technical challenges, the legal ambiguities they create, and the ways practitioners are approaching them.
Summiting the Mountain: Are You Ready for a GC Role?
Many attorneys dream of one day landing a coveted General Counsel position because it’s considered the career pinnacle for in-house counsel. To help inform these job-seekers, I’ve asked successful GCs and CLOs about their tips and suggestions for attorneys aspiring to reach the top seat in a corporate legal department.
Cloud Watching: Strategies and Best Practices for Microsoft 365 Discovery
Microsoft 365 was already widely-used before 2020, and the rise of remote work since then has caused adoption of this cloud-based solution to rapidly increase. Today, understanding the functionalities – and limitations – of the Microsoft 365 environment and its discovery tools has become essential for legal teams.
Cross-Border Discovery: A Guide to Practical Challenges for US Counsel
As the world’s economies continue to reach across borders, US counsel representing companies of all sizes are more frequently required to gather data from other countries. This paper provides those counsel with practical guidance regarding the logistical and operational challenges that arise in a typical matter requiring cross-border discovery.
From Rhetoric to Reality: Building a Culture of Diversity in the Legal Profession
Legal professionals give a lot of lip service to the importance of diversity and inclusion, yet moving the needle in those areas is challenging. Fortunately, there are ways you can change biased hiring and professional practices in order to transform your organization into a more inclusive and prosperous business.
When the Game is Afoot: Investigations and eDiscovery
The majority of eDiscovery work takes place in the context of litigation, but a significant amount of it takes place instead in the context of investigations. Although the available ESI and eDiscovery technologies are the same, the realities of handling investigations can be different in some ways important ways.
Sampling Techniques for Litigation and Investigations
Despite years of discussion in the eDiscovery industry about the power and importance of sampling techniques – particularly in the context of technology-assisted review (TAR), many practitioners remain unfamiliar with what they can accomplish with them, and when, outside of TAR, they might do so.
Clear the Final Merger Hurdle: A Guide to Second Requests in the Age of Analytics
Second Requests are high velocity, high volume, and high visibility — under normal circumstances. Now, as legal departments are facing an unprecedented post-pandemic economy and an ever-growing reliance on digital communication, the demands in this final merger step are higher than ever.
Alphabet Soup: TAR CAL, and Assisted Review
Over the decade since TAR first rose to prominence, solutions, acronyms, and new cases have proliferated dramatically. All of this rapid technical and legal evolution has made it challenging for practitioners to get a simple handle on TAR and CAL approaches and what they mean for their matters.
A Framework for Recognizing and Overcoming Implicit Bias in the Legal Profession
If you’re human, you have biases. There’s no way to change this—the human brain is evolutionarily wired to take shortcuts. In the modern world, these shortcuts cause all of us to have implicit or unconscious biases around race, gender, and other inherent characteristics of our fellow humans.
Measuring Success: Corporate Counsel Guide to Metrics-Based Management
The metrics-tracking legal department gains actionable insights that it can apply not only to internal operations but also to broader, corporate-wide assessments that impact decision-making.
Why Now Is the Time for Legal Teams to Invest in Self-Service eDiscovery
This white paper reviews what you need to know about self-service eDiscovery, including the problems it’s designed to solve and the benefits it brings to the practice of law.
The Ethical Challenges of Remote Work: The Four Critical Duties Lawyers Must Uphold
When working remotely, there are circumstances that can compromise a lawyer’s professional obligations, such as a lack of privacy at home, cybersecurity risks, and the difficulty of supervising others remotely.
Gone Viral: Social Media in eDiscovery
In 2015, the first explicit reference to social media appeared in the FRCP. Since then, many new cases involving social media evidence have appeared each year, and the vast majority of law firms have handled at least some cases involving such evidence.