Collaborative Navigation of the Stormy e-Discovery Seas

Seventy years ago, when the world was still paper-based, a famous lyricist wrote: “Say, it’s only a paper moon [s]ailing over a cardboard sea. But it wouldn’t be make-believe [i]f you believed in me.” Jump to today’s digital world, and imagine those lines re-written in an e-mail from a litigator to a client: “Now, underneath each paper moon is a vast electronic sea. If you plot a realist’s course you’ll cruise e-Discovery.” In the twentieth century, while civil litigation often wallowed in discovery disputes, at least paper’s one-dimensional nature provided several boundaries. The expansive powers of digital media have shattered those outer limits.

Thus, on a regular basis, judges, litigators, clients, and technologists have been forced to explore and testnew methods of fair, thorough, and efficient requests for, and production of, electronic information.