The venerable computer forensics and e-discovery special master, Craig Ball, has gone on record to say to lawyers that “it’s time to learn” technology to better communicate with IT staff and be prepared for e-discovery. That’s not to say that lawyers need to engage e-discovery tasks as experts. Given the tools to accomplish such tasks, many lawyers may forget they are lawyers in their zeal to uncover the smoking gun and inadvertently take a peak at privileged or private documents.
And that’s just what happened to a Connecticut assistant state attorney while searching a computer hard disk for evidence of child pornography. The prosecutor uncovered and viewed privileged documents that laid out a trial strategy for the defense and, according to the Connecticut State Supreme Court, “compounded the problem” by not immediately informing defense counsel or the court and proceeded to prosecute the case “more than one year after the invasion occurred.”
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