This is part-two of my words and videos blog on Five Tips to Avoid Costly Mistakes in Document Review. Part One gave an introduction and explained the first tip, the Time factor, talking about the importance of avoiding time pressures and resultant hurried activities. The video chat below covers the second tip, Ethics. It is always important to do the right thing, including the production of requested relevant documents that will harm your client and their case. Ethics is document review, like in all other areas of legal practice, indeed, like all other areas of life, is imperative, not discretionary. My thanks to the legal mentors in my past who drilled this into me from my first day out of law school. Any success I have enjoyed in my career I owe, at least in part, to their good influences.
Call this Ethics advice the Boy Scout tip if you wish, but it really works to avoid a panoply of errors, including potentially career-ending ones. It also helps you to sleep at night and have a clean conscience. The slippery slopes of morality are where the worst errors are made in all legal tasks, but this is particularly true in document review. Discovery in our system is run by lawyers, not judges, magistrates, or special masters. It is based on lawyers faithful conduct and compliance with the rules, including the all-important rules requiring the voluntary production of evidence harmful to a client (a notion strange to many legal systems outside of the U.S.).
Lawyers know the rules, even if their clients do not, and it is critical that they follow them earnestly, holding up against all pressures and temptations. At the end of the day, your reputation and integrity are all that you have, so compromising your ethics is never an acceptable alternative. The Rules of Professional Conduct must be the guiding star of all legal practice, including electronic document review. It is your job as a lawyer to find the evidence and argue it’s meaning; never to hide it. This video is a reminder of a core truth of lawyer obligations as officers of the court.
____
Tip #2 – Ethics and Electronic Discovery
____
For more of Losey’s thoughts on ethics and e-discovery, see: Lawyers Behaving Badly: Understanding Unprofessional Conduct in e-Discovery, 60 Mercer L. Rev. 983 (Spring 2009); Mancia v. Mayflower Begins a Pilgrimage to the New World of Cooperation, 10 Sedona Conf. J. 377 (2009 Supp.).
To be continued …
[…] factor, talking about the importance of avoiding time pressures and resultant hurried activities. Part Two explained the second tip, Ethics, and how scrupulous integrity and compliance with the Rules of […]