E-Discovery

In December 2006 new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure became effective regarding "E-Discovery." These rules affect not just parties to federal lawsuits, but also any business which has electronic information which could be subpoenaed.

The new rules now specifically address electronically stored information ("ESI"). This will lead judges and parties to focus even more on the importance of ESI. The new rules emphasize that the discovery of ESI stands on equal footing with the discovery of paper documents. The rules include any type of information that is stored electronically.

Enterprise Risk Management can help businesses and their counsel to properly handle ESI and E-Discovery. Enterprise Risk Management's IT experts can:

• Assist businesses and their counsel to comply with the new rules to avoid sanctions.
• Assist attorneys in gaining an understanding of the information system infrastructure of their client as well as the system infrastructure of the opposing side.
• Assist attorneys in identifying the ESI that needs to be preserved by their client and by the opposing party.
• Assist attorneys in testing whether the opposing side has properly preserved ESI.
• Assist attorneys with the IT issues related to identifying the scope, time period, sources and formats of the ESI that their client will be providing.
• Assist attorneys in formulating requests for discovery from the opposing party.
• Assist attorneys in testing the opposing side's assertion that certain data is not reasonable accessible.
• Assist attorneys in analyzing ESI obtained from the opposing side.
• Assist attorneys with depositions concerning information systems, ESI and data analysis.
• Assist businesses and their attorneys during the entire litigation process by providing information systems and data analysis expertise needed to deal with the opponent's requests, assertions and objections.