From the President

Hello,

With Thanksgiving approaching, we would like to express our appreciation for your loyalty and support this past year. Because we understand the discovery process is complex and challenging, our goal is to take the pressure off by handling your court reporting, interpreter, and video needs with responsiveness and ease for you.

I hope you continue to find the articles, tips, and tools in The Discovery Update helpful and that you will forward any useful information to your colleagues, as well.

Best regards,
Sheila Atkinson-Baker

Deduplication: Why Computers See Differences in Files that Look Alike to You

By Craig Ball

An employee of an e-discovery service provider asked me to help him explain to his boss why deduplication works well for native files but frequently fails when applied to TIFF images.  The question intrigued me because it requires we dip our toes into the shallow end of cryptographic hashing and dispel a common misconception about electronic documents.

Most people regard a Word document file, a PDF or TIFF image made from the document file, a printout of the file and a scan of the printout as being essentially “the same thing.” Understandably, they focus on content and pay little heed to form. But when it comes to electronically stored information, the form of the data—the structure, encoding, and medium employed to store and deliver content–matters a great deal. As data, a Word document and its imaged counterpart are radically different data streams from one another and from a digital scan of a paper printout. Visually they are alike when viewed as an image or printout but digitally they bear not the slightest resemblance.

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Preparing for the eDiscovery Wave of the Internet of Things

Contributed by Recommind, Inc.

Among the recent developments in the eDiscovery industry, one of the most anticipated trends is the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT has been in the news for a few years now. But for the eDiscovery world, 2014 marked the IoT’s emergence as a hot topic. This is due in large part to the increasing number of interconnected devices, applications, technologies, and other innovations that are flooding workplaces, businesses, and homes. Given the increasing ubiquity of the IoT, its potential to generate large amounts of data, the relevance that such information could hold in litigation, and the privacy and security risks associated with the IoT, lawyers and clients should begin to consider what preparations to take now so they are ready when a tsunami of IoT-related issues arrive.

Making eDiscovery Waves

That the IoT caught the attention of the eDiscovery cognoscenti became evident when Baker Hostetler published a well-reasoned post last year regarding the regulatory and security challenges arising from IoT. This was followed up by the celebrated IoT session from the 2014 Georgetown Law Advanced E-Discovery Institute.  Read full article

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