Perhaps the “hottest” area in legal technology right now is discovery, which is increasingly shifting from paper to digital. There seems to be activity on many fronts.
At the Legal Tech show last week, there were many vendors offering a range of solutions. Almost every legal publication I read regularly has a range of articles on electronic discovery. And law firm technology managers are increasingly focusing on how best to serve clients in discovery and on their own records retention policies.
Those following electronic evidence discovery may be interested in a recent article appearing in the ABA Journal eReport. I recently spotted on LawTechGuru a reference to UNLOCKING ELECTRONIC EVIDENCE – ABA Task Force Offers Draft E-Discovery Standards, which is an article about proposed ABA E-Discovery Standards (note that this is a PDF file on the Federal Judicial Center web site). The article summarizes the key proposals. Separately, another set of potentially influential e-discovery principles was published in January by The Sedona Conference.
It will be interesting to see how court rules and decisions evolve over the next couple of years. Law firms that want to serve their clients effectively should be sure to have a good grasp of the law concerning and the technology options to manage electronic discovery.