Thursday, August 28, 2008

What is wrong with eDiscovery

The article in the Economist
  1. Argues that US legal system is already a "sick patient", and eDiscovery threatens a lethal "spike in fever";
  2. As an example, talks about a discovery request to produce the MySpace, Facebook, and chat records of teenage girl patients, related to a medical insurance lawsuit;
  3. Explains that many foreign countries limit the discovery due to their inquisitorial system, compared to the US adversarial system;
  4. And suggests that the judges should limit the amounts of eDiscovery.
I could not agree more, and I have seen opinions that the new FRCP rules have failed to stem the deluge of eDiscovery. However, these are lonely voices, and I do not see the easement coming soon. Currently, most of the effort is in coming to grips with eDiscovery, both for lawyers and judges, and not it finding what is wrong and fixing it.

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