As dependence on electronic communication has grown, lawyers and their clients have faced new and significant issues relating to preservation of electronic information.
Electronically stored information is often recycled pursuant to a company’s ordinary course of business, for example, through a computer system that automatically deletes e-mail older than 60 days unless archived; or through a document retrieval system that overwrites metadata (such as data about the history of the creation of a document) each time an electronic file is accessed. Once a duty to preserve evidence arises, companies must act to halt the deletion or loss of potentially relevant electronic data.
