Datafile

As the demand for e-discovery grows, so too does the challenge of collecting and preserving digital information—including unstructured and structured data. Unstructured data, such as Word documents, emails and text files are usually straightforward to collect, especially with the use of an e-discovery team that can review, search and process documents in a manner that is repeatable and defensible in court.

However, structured data, such as a CRM database or data stored in proprietary software, can be much more complicated and can derail the e-discovery process if not managed carefully. For starters, there is often an enormous amount of data to sift through and it may be difficult to determine what data is relevant, how to best preserve and produce the data, or how to even go about viewing the data found in these structured formats!

Despite these hurdles, structured data that is correctly collected, preserved and analyzed in a meaningful and legal manner can play a key role in the outcome of a case. But, it's essential to get your structured data e-discovery process right from the get-go.

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Identify Issues Early

Whether you are dealing with structured or unstructured data, there are four key questions you need to answer at the onset of any case to help you devise an appropriate e-discovery strategy:

  1. Who is involved in the discovery process?
  2. Where are the sources of information stored?
  3. What types of sources are they?
  4. How will you access and collect the data?

The answers to these questions will help determine your next steps. In particular, it will help you determine whether you have structured data to collect and how complicated it will be to do so. It will also help you identify tasks you don't have the technical skills to do—such as how to access structured data in a cloud-based proprietary database or how to manage an enormous database and be able to extract the relevant data in a timely and repeatable manner.

If you identify areas of the e-discovery process that you may need help with, it's essential to engage expert help earlier rather than later. In complex litigation, it's usually a more costly effort to clean up issues after the fact. Accordingly, much time can be saved and extra expenses can often be avoided if you engage help prior to agreeing to an ESI order.

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Weigh Ethical Considerations

Another important concern in the e-discovery process is your ability to satisfy your ethical duty of competence. In California, the Standing Committee On Professional Responsibility and Conduct of the California State Bar stated in Formal Opinion No. 2015-193 that an attorney may violate ethical duties of competence by failing to understand and perform specific e-discovery tasks.

In a 2012 update to Comment 8 of Model Rule 1.1, the American Bar Association also declared that lawyers have a duty of competency in regards to technology. States have followed suit, with 36 states now recognizing that attorneys have an ethical duty to be competent in any technology they use as well as understanding what technology their clients use.

Because of the complexity of large discovery such as structured data, having an expert in structured data e-discovery can ensure that you meet your legal and ethical obligations as an attorney.

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Benefits of Structured Data Expertise

Employing an e-discovery expert in structured data can not only keep you out of ethical hot water, it can also help facilitate a better litigation strategy. An e-discovery expert will be able to understand what is involved in extracting and analyzing structured data and can strategize with you on timelines to ensure that the data you collect is done in a repeatable manner that will hold up in court.

Equally important, an expert can help you analyze this data to help you deliver a win. One example of this is our work with a national transportation firm. As part of the e-discovery process, we helped the company extract structured data from a proprietary database. Once collected, we performed extensive analyses to create custom demonstratives showing truckers' routes using GPS logs and time stamps. This work was critical to the court denying the drivers' claims and ending two class action suits that sought a total of $122 million.

If you've been ignoring the analysis of structured data or not using it to its full potential in your e-discovery process, it's time to rethink your strategy. Structured data, when collected and analyzed in a meaningful manner, can lead to discoveries that can make or break a case.

Aaron Vick is Chief Strategy Officer for Cicayda, a legal technology firm that combines powerful cloud-based eDiscovery and Legal Hold software with analytics and legal expertise. Early in his career, Aaron was part of the Rocket Science team that designed the first document research product, CaseLogistix, for the legal discovery market. After CaseLogistix's acquisition by Thomson Reuters, Aaron played an integral part in developing its Litigation Product Specialists team.