New York City Bar Association E-Discovery Outline

In November 2015, the New York City Bar Association published its E-Discovery Identification and Preservation Guide for Lawyers . This is a very simple 5 page outline which may be helpful for attorneys looking to gain a quick overview of the process. It give you some insight on the kind of things likely to be uppermost in an attorney's mind when you're assisting them with the collection of data at a client's offices.

The guides stresses the need to document the identification and preservation of electronically stored information. The main steps are simply determining the key issues; key custodians; relevant date range; and then implementing a litigation hold both directly on the client and on third parties that hold the client's data.

Attorneys are to consider either preparing a forensically sound copy of accessible ESI or a forensic image which includes deleted data. An inventory is to be prepared of data storage systems and a description should be given of the architecture of the email system. The attorney should investigate any monitoring of employees' computer usage, and also confirm that a company's document retention policy has been suspended