Notes on recent trends in e-discovery, data privacy, and the use of technology to enhance the practice of law
Announcements
| Categories |
Date |
Entries |
Announcements
E-Discovery |
07/02/2020 |
George Jon announced it had chosen Dublin as home for its first international office. |
Announcements
E-Discovery |
07/01/2020 |
Morae Global announced the acquisition of legal management consultancy Janders Dean, establishing a UK-based legal advisory practice group to complement the company’s existing US-based advisory team. |
Announcements
E-Discovery |
06/30/2020 |
The Sedona Conference announced publication of The Sedona Conference Cooperation Proclamation: Resources for the Judiciary, Third Edition (“Judicial Resources”), available for download. This is the first revision of the Judicial Resources since 2014. |
Announcements
Privacy |
06/30/2020 |
OneTrust announced the acquisition of Integris Software, adding to its data discovery and classification capabilities. |
Announcements
Enhancing Practice |
06/26/2020 |
Microsoft’s legal department announced the winners of its legal innovation challenge, reported Gina Passarella Cipriani of The American Lawyer. Nine teams, comprised of 13 firms, competed for a chance to move into a Microsoft accelerator program. Winning were the trio of Greenberg Traurig, Perkins Coie, and Davis Wright Tremaine, and the pitch by K&L Gates. |
Announcements
E-Discovery |
06/23/2020 |
ESI Analyst announced a channel partnership with SullivanStrickler, pursuant to which SullivanStrickler’s computer forensics and disputes practice will deploy ESI Analyst’s data analytics and investigation tools. |
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E-discovery
| Categories |
Date |
Entries |
| E-Discovery |
07/02/2020 |
G2, a tech marketplace that maintains reviews of business technology, has a section of their website dedicated to e-discovery software. G2 lists and ranks software providers – 108 so far – and scores them in a G2 Grid. As with all such complications, this set of materials should be used with care and caution, at most as one more tool to help guide a buying decision and not as a substitute for independent assessment and evaluation. |
Announcements
E-Discovery |
07/02/2020 |
George Jon announced it had chosen Dublin as home for its first international office. |
Announcements
E-Discovery |
07/01/2020 |
Morae Global announced the acquisition of legal management consultancy Janders Dean, establishing a UK-based legal advisory practice group to complement the company’s existing US-based advisory team. |
Announcements
E-Discovery |
06/30/2020 |
The Sedona Conference announced publication of The Sedona Conference Cooperation Proclamation: Resources for the Judiciary, Third Edition (“Judicial Resources”), available for download. This is the first revision of the Judicial Resources since 2014. |
| E-Discovery |
06/30/2020 |
E-discovery software is being used in the battle against COVID-19, reported Bob Ambrogi of LawSites. In one case, Maura Grossman and Gordon Cormack have been using their Continuous Active Learning TAR protocol to automate literature searches related to COVID-19. In another, Relativity has been contributing to an initiative by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop text- and data-mining techniques to help scientists search data for answers to high-priority questions about COVID-19. |
Announcements
E-Discovery |
06/23/2020 |
ESI Analyst announced a channel partnership with SullivanStrickler, pursuant to which SullivanStrickler’s computer forensics and disputes practice will deploy ESI Analyst’s data analytics and investigation tools. |
E-Discovery
Privacy |
06/22/2020 |
Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) represent the most recent convergence of e-discovery and data privacy, as Doug Austin noted in a article where he outlined DSAR basics. |
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Cybersecurity
| Categories |
Date |
Entries |
| Cybersecurity |
07/02/2020 |
Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report is available online and as a download. Weighing in at 119 pages, the report covers Verizon’s analysis of 157,525 data breach incidents. |
| Cybersecurity |
07/01/2020 |
Kenya Parrish-Dixon of Empire Technologies Risk Management Group offered four sets of recommendations for securing data when working remotely: Assets, Antivirus and Additional Protocols; Reboot, Reboot and Reboot Some More; Too Many Passwords; and Zoom and Teams (but Primarily Zoom). |
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Enhancing practice
| Categories |
Date |
Entries |
| Enhancing Practice |
07/06/2020 |
An article published on the ABA’s site contains an interview with Hugh Logue, author of the new book, “Automating Legal Services: Justice Through Technology”. In the book and interview, Logue argued that lawyers should automate mundane legal services to free attorneys to carry out the creative tasks they enjoy and clients value the most. |
| Enhancing Practice |
07/02/2020 |
Global Legal Tech Report has released reports covering Asia and New Zealand, wrote Bob Ambrogi of LawSites, following an earlier report on Australia and as part of a series of regional reports on legal tech worldwide that is to culminate in November. |
| Enhancing Practice |
07/02/2020 |
Citing an article by Sharon Nelson of Sensei Enterprises, Bob Ambrogi of LawSites reported that New York could soon join the two, Florida and North Carolina, that require technology training as part of a lawyer’s obligation to undergo continuing legal education. On June 13, the New York State Bar Association announced it had approved a report recommending amending the mandatory continuing legal education rule to require one credit in cybersecurity. |
| Enhancing Practice |
07/01/2020 |
To mark its 300th episode, Litera TV has announced a new summer lineup of well-known legal tech experts who will join with programs of their own, reported Bob Ambrogi of LawSites. |
Announcements
Enhancing Practice |
06/26/2020 |
Microsoft’s legal department announced the winners of its legal innovation challenge, reported Gina Passarella Cipriani of The American Lawyer. Nine teams, comprised of 13 firms, competed for a chance to move into a Microsoft accelerator program. Winning were the trio of Greenberg Traurig, Perkins Coie, and Davis Wright Tremaine, and the pitch by K&L Gates. |
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Privacy
| Categories |
Date |
Entries |
| Privacy |
07/02/2020 |
On June 25, the California State Senate significantly amended California Assembly Bill 1281, reported Glenn A. Brown, Shalin Sood, and Lydia de la Torre of Squire Patton Boggs, removing proposed enhanced protections for the use of facial recognition technologies and focusing on extending by one year the B2B and employee exemptions provided for under the CCPA. |
| Privacy |
07/01/2020 |
More than 1/2 of technology companies’ general counsel say that are unprepared for new privacy regulations, according to a survey by Ethyca and TechGC, reported Dan Clark of Legaltech news and The Global Legal Post. |
| Privacy |
06/30/2020 |
CCPA revisions from March contain a “financial incentives” requirement, noted Law.com’s Frank Ready in a Corporate Counsel article. The requirement prohibits businesses from offering a different price or service based on a consumer’s willingness to exchange personal data, unless that difference is “reasonably related to the value of the data”, wrote Ready. For more information, see an article, CCPA Enforcement on Track for July 1, 2020: Breaking Down the Latest Revisions to CCPA Proposed Regulations, posted on the Crowell & Moring website. |
| Privacy |
06/30/2020 |
The European Commission has launched a public consultation on the revision of the Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems, reported Hunton Andrews Kurth. The review is needed, according the revision proposal, because “[d]espite progress made with the Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems, cybersecurity capabilities in the Member States remain unequal and the level of protection in the EU is insufficient.” |
Announcements
Privacy |
06/30/2020 |
OneTrust announced the acquisition of Integris Software, adding to its data discovery and classification capabilities. |
| Privacy |
06/30/2020 |
On June 30, Florida’s governor approved HB 1189, Genetic Information for Insurance Purposes. The law, which went into effect on July 1, “[p]rohibits life insurers & long-term care insurers from canceling, limiting, or denying coverage, or establishing differentials in premium rates based on genetic information; prohibits such insurers from taking certain actions relating to genetic information for any insurance purpose.” |
| Privacy |
06/23/2020 |
Republican Senators Graham, Cotton, and Blackburn introduced the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act, a bill designed to end the use of “warrant-proof” encrypted technology, according to a press release from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. |
E-Discovery
Privacy |
06/22/2020 |
Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) represent the most recent convergence of e-discovery and data privacy, as Doug Austin noted in a article where he outlined DSAR basics. |
| Privacy |
06/19/2020 |
Uncertainly continues to be the most certain thing about the CCPA, according to a Legaltech New article by Frank Ready, where he reports that the data on which final regulations submitted by the California Attorney General’s Office to the California Office of Administrative Law go into effect could be anytime between July 1 and October 1. |
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E-discovery case law
| Date |
Posture |
Outcome |
Entries |
| 06/09/2020 |
Plaintiffs’ motion to compel defendants to produce litigation hold and all related ESI and for sanctions. |
Motion granted as to litigation hold and related ESI. Motion held in abeyance as to sanctions. |
Radiation Oncology Servs. v. Our Lady of Lourdes Mem. Hosp., Inc., No. EF15-462 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2020)
According to New York Supreme Court Justice Mark G. Masler, “a litigation hold must be produced upon a preliminary showing of spoliation to provide a proper record for consideration of whether spoliation sanctions are warranted, unless the party that had been in control of the destroyed evidence can establish, as a matter of law, that spoliation sanctions are unwarranted regardless of the adequacy of the litigation hold.” Plaintiffs cited 7 instances of alleged spoliation. The court looked at two. Each instance involved destruction of ESI related to an email message. In each instance, defendants did not dispute there was an obligation to preserve the emails; admitted to affirmatively deleting one email message and for the other did not establish it was destroyed without culpable conduct on their part; and did not exclude the possibility that the deleted ESI would provided evidence relevant to plaintiffs’ claims. The court ordered defendants to produce the litigation hold and all associated ESI. The could held the sanctions portion of the motion in abeyance to allow for further submissions. |
| 06/08/2020 |
Defendant’s motion for sanctions. |
Motion granted in part and denied in part. |
Faulkner v. Aero Fulfillment Services, Case No. 1:19-cv-268 (S.D. of Ohio, Western Division, June 8, 2020)
U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephanie K. Bowman admonished plaintiff violated her duty to preserve by deleting her LinkedIn account following production of its contents, but denied defendant’s request for monetary sanctions and denied without prejudice defendant’s request for an adverse jury instruction. Plaintiff had produced other relevant social media information; the dispute arose over plaintiff’s LinkedIn account. For that account, plaintiff’s counsel obtained her login credentials and following instructions on LinkedIn’s site download the full data archive of her account as an Excel file which he then produced to defendant. After counsel downloaded the content, plaintiff deactivated or deleted that account, an action her counsel did not initial know about. Defendant sought re-production of the LinkedIn content in a different format as well as production of LinkedIn content not initially produced. Plaintiff declined to re-produce content in a new format. Plaintiff’s counsel wrote that he was unable to produce the additional content as plaintiff had deactivated her account shortly after he had received her data and he could not reactive the account. The court concluded that plaintiff initially complied with her obligation to produce the entirely of her LinkedIn account in the format in which LinkedIn provided it to her, but that when she deactivated that account she violated her duty to preserve potentially relevant evidence. |
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