H Christopher Boehning

August 02, 2011 | New York Law Journal

H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison write that although the ethics opinions from three New York bar associations address some of the ethical parameters within which lawyers may exploit information from social networking sites provide much needed guidance, they address only a few of the many ethical issues lawyers may confront.

By H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J.Toal

10 minute read

August 31, 2007 | Law.com

Recent headlines highlight the vanishing line between professional and private e-mail accounts. Attorneys are likely to face an increasing number of requests for access to any business-related e-mail on the employee's home computer and online e-mail account.

By H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal

13 minute read

June 04, 2010 | Law.com

H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal of Paul Weiss consider the final Qualcomm opinion as a one-time pass for attorneys who had been through enough. The judge may have declined sanctions because the Qualcomm attorneys had already been sanctioned in her prior ruling.

By H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal

8 minute read

October 24, 2006 | New York Law Journal

John F. Baughman and H. Christopher Boehning, partners at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, write that case law on non-party cost-shifting has been slow to develop, but a few lessons are available. Take, for example, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which led to a half-century of uneasy standoff between the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. The doctrine also sometimes has a moderating influence on the scope of parties' electronic discovery.

By John F. Baughman and H. Christopher Boehning

9 minute read

August 05, 2010 | Legaltech News

For counsel who missed Victory Stanley's warning to conduct quality control on keyword search terms, attorneys H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal point to a recent ruling that states loud and clear: Counsel who fail to conduct quality control risk involuntarily waiving privilege.

By H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal

13 minute read

February 28, 2006 | New York Law Journal

John F. Baughman and H. Christopher Boehning, partners at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, write that the growing volume of electronic data and number of discovery demands that require production of electronic data have led to practices that are designed to ease the burdens associated with reviewing and producing vast quantities of electronic data.

By John F. Baughman and H. Christopher Boehning

9 minute read

August 25, 2009 | New York Law Journal

H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal, partners at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, review two recent cases that make it clearer than ever that parties who shirk their obligations to preserve and produce ESI do so at great peril. In one, the court precluded the wrongdoers from asserting their affirmative defense during the remainder of the case and went on to grant summary judgment for plaintiffs on all claims. In the other case, still ongoing, the judge held that default judgment was not warranted but concluded it would "fairly compensate" plaintiff to grant an adverse-inference instruction to the jury concerning the spoliated evidence, a serious blow to the prospects of the defendant.

By H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal

9 minute read

April 28, 2009 | New York Law Journal

H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal, partners at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, write: Evidently weary of deficient keyword searches, U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Peck recently issued a self-styled "wake-up call" to members of the bar in the Southern District. Instead of attorneys designing keywords without adequate information "by the seat of their pants," Magistrate Judge Peck appealed for keyword formulations based on careful thought, quality control, testing and cooperation.

By H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal

11 minute read

June 26, 2007 | Law.com

Now that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have been modified to acknowledge explicitly the role electronic information plays in contemporary legal disputes, the uneasy process of adapting rules written in the era of typewriters and mimeographs to a world of e-mail and metadata has been replaced by a new task: determining how the recent amendments have -- and have not -- altered the existing legal landscape concerning electronic discovery.

By H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal

14 minute read

June 28, 2006 | Law.com

Because it's sometimes unclear to companies when the duty to preserve electronic data will arise, its deletion poses a real risk. A proposed amendment to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(f) is intended to provide a safe harbor for firms that, through automatic document-deletion systems, unwittingly trash data that should be preserved in case of litigation. Attorneys John F. Baughman and H. Christopher Boehning consider how safe the safe harbor really is.

By John F. Baughman and H. Christopher Boehning

9 minute read