The Importance of a 502(d) Order and Attorney Candor

October 27, 2019

I always suggest that attorneys ask for a 502(d) Order under Federal Rules of Evidence before production of ESI. A new case out of Texas demonstrates some of the many bad things that can happen if you do not. Bellamy v. Wal-Mart Stores, Texas, LLC, No. SA-18-CV-60-XR, 2019 WL 3936992 (W.D. Tex. Aug. 19, 2019). The opinion is from one of the leading e-discovery jurists in the country, Texas District Court Judge Xavier Rodriguez. Although he allowed the inadvertently produced documents to be clawed back, it was a close call. In the process Judge Rodriguez considered those documents and sanctioned defendants based on what he read. He struck defendant’s comparative negligence defense and awarded fees and costs. It could have been worse. The accidentally disclosed attorney emails suggested multiple rule violations and a disturbing lack of candor to the court.

This is a must read opinion, not only because of who wrote it, Judge Rodriguez, and the quality of his research and analysis, but also because of the facts of the case. There are many things we can learn from the mistakes highlighted in this opinion. Including the all important ethical values of attorney candor to the court and cooperation.

I will let the learned Judge Rodriguez’ own words in Bellamy explain this case, which was colored by the  attorney conduct he uncovered.

This is a slip and fall case. Plaintiff alleges that she . .  tripped over a pallet while walking through sliding doors into the garden center. . . .

There have been several discovery disputes that have arisen in this case. The Magistrate Judge presided over the first round of disputes and eventually ordered that the Plaintiff’s [First] Motion for Sanctions be dismissed without prejudice to allow for the deposition of a Wal-Mart employee who may have been responsible for leaving the pallet unattended. The Magistrate Judge further ordered that Defendant supplement its disclosures and discovery responses, amend its objections, and provide Plaintiff with a privilege log as to any withheld documents.

This latest round of disputes centers on what happened next. In responding to the Magistrate Judge’s Order, a paralegal in counsel for Defendant’s office inadvertently produced documents that Defendant claims are privileged under the attorney-client privilege or work product. Plaintiff responds that some documents are not privileged. With regard to documents that are privileged, Plaintiff argues that these documents nonetheless demonstrate that Defendant’s counsel has acted in bad faith and engaged in discovery abuse.

Id. at pg. 1 of 7.

Judge Rodriguez starts with an analysis of Evidence Rule 502.

This Court encourages parties to enter into a Rule 502(d) Order[1], which states: “A federal court may order that the privilege or protection is not waived by disclosure connected with the litigation pending before the court.” FED. R. EVID. 502(d). Despite this Court’s encouragement, the Defendant did not request such an Order.[2] This was the first of many mistakes by Defendant’s counsel in this case. In the absence of a 502(d) Order, the Court then turns to an analysis under Rule 502(b).  . . .

In this case the privilege log was woefully deficient. Specifically, the Court is unable to ascertain the identities of various recipients of the emails in question.

Id. at pg 2 of 7.

The emails were all submitted to Judge Rodriguez for review in camera. The opinion makes clear that Judge Rodriguez did not think all of these emails were in fact privileged under case law, but plaintiff’s counsel had for some reason, not explained, conceded that they were.

But as stated above, because Plaintiff concedes that the documents are privileged, the Court will not disturb the concession that the documents are covered by the attorney-client privilege.

Id.

The elements of Rule 502(b) were met with this odd concession, so Judge Rodriguez had no choice but to order their return and prevent plaintiff from using the emails at trial, but Judge Rodriguez was not at all happy about the contents of the emails. This is where the hammer falls:

*3 Accordingly, pursuant to Fed. R. Evid. 502(b) and Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(5)(B), Defendant is entitled to “claw back” the documents it inadvertently produced. But that is not the end of this analysis. Although Plaintiff may not further use these documents in this case, preventing their use in analyzing the pending motion for sanctions would result in a perverse result, upending the rules of civil procedure and encouraging discovery abuse.

Id.

Judge Rodriguez starts by noting defense counsel became aware of key witnesses and failed to disclose them.

With regard to the above individuals, Defendant failed to list them in its Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a)(1) initial disclosures and failed to timely list them in answers to interrogatories. It is apparent from a reading of the materials submitted either Defendant’s counsel was grossly negligent in fulfilling their discovery obligations or they realized they had an uncooperative manager who was refusing to assist in their investigation, and they did not want to disclose the identities of potentially “bad” witnesses. Counsel for Defendant attempts to shift some of this blame by stating that Plaintiff was already aware of the manager and garden center employee because of her prior employment with Wal-Mart. This shifting is unpersuasive. Defendant’s counsel had obligations to provide this information and it unreasonably and untimely did not.

Id. at pg. 3 of 7.

The in camera privileged emails Judge Rodriguez read also showed that a video of the slip and fall once existed. Yikes. That is a real problem.

Counsel for Defendant never disclosed to Plaintiff’s counsel that at one time video may have existed that was now lost. Rather, counsel merely kept repeating that video does not exist.

Id.

That was way too cute. Disclosure to opposing counsel and the court was expected by Judge Rodriguez.

If that were not all bad enough, the emails revealed another hidden fact:

Finally, Plaintiff’s counsel discovered in the inadvertently produced emails that: (9) Defendant hired an
investigator to conduct a full social media/background check on the Plaintiff on June 20, 2018; and (10)
outside counsel for Defendant notified “Travis Rodmon-Legal” that surveillance had been completed on the Plaintiff and “it is debatable if the footage will be beneficial…. The investigator informs me that she moves very slowly, gingerly and hobbles a bit.”

*4 Counsel for Defendant never disclosed that it possessed video of the Plaintiff. Defendant was under an obligation to disclose any such video as a request for production had been made to that effect. Likewise, Wal-Mart had obtained numerous statements from the Plaintiff prior to her obtaining representation. These statements were requested in requests for production, but not timely disclosed. Counsel for Defendant attributes this failure to the fact that one attorney working this file left the firm and the file was reassigned and the new attorney was unaware of the video’s existence. Although this suggests no “bad faith”, at the time Wal-Mart sent its responses to requests for production and stated that it had no video of the Plaintiff it violated Rule 26(g).

Plaintiff requests that Defendant be sanctioned for failing to disclose that store surveillance video at one point existed and at some point became “lost.” Plaintiff also seeks sanctions because the Wal-Mart manager testified at her deposition that she took multiple photos (including of the pallet) and these photos have never been produced. Likewise, the manager testified that she obtained a statement from the employee who left the pallet unattended and that statement has never been produced. Plaintiff also seeks sanctions because Wal-Mart did not preserve the pallet in question. Finally, Plaintiff requests sanctions generally for Defendant’s failure to honor its discovery obligations. Plaintiff also requests that the Court provide an adverse inference instruction to the jury regarding the missing information. Plaintiff seeks these various sanctions citing generally to Fed. R. Civ. P. 37 and the court’s “inherent
authority.”

Id.

Judge Rodriguez examines the law on sanctions and then considers the ethical Duty of Candor to the Court (Rule 3.3, Model Rules of Professional Conduct) the Duty of Cooperation and Rule 1, FRCP (just, speedy and inexpensive).

D. Duty of Candor, Cooperation and FED. R. CIV. P. 1

Counsel for Defendant wisely opened its Response brief with the following: “Defendant’s counsel
acknowledges and accepts it made mistakes during the discovery of this matter. It accepts that consequences may come from the Court as it considers Plaintiff’s Motions before the Court.”

It is apparent that at the time of the accident, Defendant considered this a low-value or nuisance case. It did not contemplate the severity of the Plaintiff’s injuries and medical treatment. But once Plaintiff placed Defendant on notice that she was going to pursue litigation, reasonable and proportionate preservation obligations were required to be met. Likewise, defense counsel may be on billing constraints, but discovery obligations and adherence to the rules of civil procedure must be met.

*7 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 1 and 26(f) contemplate that the parties meet in good faith to discuss the case and facilitate resolution of the case and discovery issues because the parties have an obligation “to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action.” Rather than complying with the rules, defense counsel delayed the production of adverse material and the identity of witnesses and the extent of the inappropriate acts only fully became revealed after an inadvertent production of emails was made (after intervention by the Magistrate Judge).

Id. at pgs. 5-6 of 7.

Judge Rodriguez then concludes:

A reading of the file in this case makes apparent that Wal-Mart has known early on that it is responsible for the pallet being left unattended for some period of time in an area frequented by customers. Many counsel for defendants argue that the burden is on a plaintiff to establish all elements of their causes of action. That is true. But if that is going to be the Defendant’s strategy (even when knowing they will likely suffer defeat), this Court is not sympathetic to complaints that litigation is too expensive. In this case, rather than focusing on the extent of Plaintiff’s damages, Wal-Mart has now expended significant time and fees on the liability issue its own claims investigator conceded a long time ago.

Conclusion

Defendant’s Motion to Abate or Strike Plaintiff’s Second Motion for Sanctions (docket no. 49) is DENIED, but as stated above Plaintiff may not use the inadvertently produced documents for any other purpose and counsel must return any documents still in Plaintiff’s possession, if any, to Defendant. Plaintiffs’ Motion for Sanctions (docket no. 50) is GRANTED as stated above. Defendant may not assert any comparative negligence defense in this case, including arguing that the danger was open and obvious.

Id. at pgs. 6-7 of 7.

 

1 Comment | Evidence, Lawyers Duties, New Rules, Spoliation/Sanctions | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Ralph Losey

Purple Rain of Sanctions Falls on the Record Company in the “Prince Case” for their Intentional Destruction of Text Messages

March 10, 2019

Honey, I know, I know
I know times are changing
It’s time we all reach out
For something new, that means you too.
Purple Rain
PRINCE Rogers Nelson
1958-2016

I know, I know, it used to be good enough just to save the relevant emails and ESI on company computers. Not any more. Times are changing. Important business is now conducted by phone text and other messages. It’s time we all reach out and save something new, save the texts, save the phones. That directive applies to everyone, that means you too. Prince record company executives recently found that out the hard way in District Court in Minneapolis. Paisley Park Enters. v. Boxill, No. 0:17-cv-01212, (D. Minn., 3/5/19) (copy here: Prince_Discovery_Order).

United States Magistrate Judge Tony N. Leung sanctioned the record company defendant and its two top executives in a suit over the posthumous release of Prince’s “Deliverance” album. They were sanctioned because the plaintiff, the Prince Estate via Paisley Park, proved that the defendant executives intentionally destroyed text messages about the album. They denied bad intent and claim they did what they thought the law required, save the emails and office computer data. Defendants claimed they provided discovery from other sources of ESI, including their work computers, cooperated with a forensic data firm to ensure Plaintiffs obtained everything they sought, but, they further argue that Plaintiffs never asked to inspect their cell phones during this process. They claimed they did not know they also had to preserve their text messages.

One is reminded of the first verse to Purple Rain:
I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted to one time to see you laughing
I only wanted to see you
Laughing in the purple rain

Judge Tony Leung was not laughing, purple rain or not. He did not believe defendants’ good faith intent argument. He was no more impressed by their “times are changing,” “we didn’t know” argument than Prince was in Purple Rain. In today’s world preservation of email is not enough. If text messages are how people did business, which was the case in Paisley Park, then these messages must also be preserved. As Judge Leung put it:

In the contemporary world of communications, even leaving out the potential and reality of finding the modern-day litigation equivalent of a “smoking gun” in text messages, e-mails, and possibly other social media, the Court is baffled as to how Defendants can reasonably claim to believe that their text messages would be immune from discovery.

Perhaps what really got to the judge was that these record executives not only the deleted the texts, they wiped the phones and then they threw them away. This was all before suit was filed, but they knew full well at the time that the Estate was going to sue them for copyright violations.  As Judge Leung explained (emphasis added):  “An e-discovery lawyer for Plaintiffs’ law firm indicates that had Staley and Wilson not wiped and discarded their phones, it might have been possible to recover the deleted messages. (ECF No. 387, p. 2).” (Note: this is the first time I can recall this expression “e-discovery lawyer”  being used in an opinion.)

Text Message Spoliation Law

Judge Leung provides a good summary of the law.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require that parties take reasonable steps to preserve ESI that is relevant to litigation. Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e). The Court may sanction a party for failure for failure to do so, provided that the lost ESI cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery. Id. Rule 37(e) makes two types of sanctions available to the Court. Under Rule 37(e)(1), if the adverse party has suffered prejudice from the spoliation of evidence, the Court may order whatever sanctions are necessary to cure the prejudice. But under Rule 37(e)(2), if the Court finds that the party “acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use in the litigation,” the Court may order more severe sanctions, including a presumption that the lost information was unfavorable to the party or an instruction to the jury that it “may or must presume the information was unfavorable to the party.” The Court may also sanction a party for failing to obey a discovery order. Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(b). Sanctions available under Rule 37(b) include an order directing that certain designated facts be taken as established for purposes of the action, payment of reasonable expenses, and civil contempt of court.

Pgs.6-7

There is no doubt that Staley and Wilson are the types of persons likely to have relevant information, given their status as principals of RMA and owners of Deliverance. Nor can there be any reasonable dispute as to the fact that their text messages were likely to contain information relevant to this litigation. In fact, Boxill and other third parties produced text messages that they sent to or received from Staley and Wilson. Neither party disputes that those text messages were relevant to this litigation. Thus, the RMA Defendants were required to take reasonable steps to preserve Staley and Wilson’s text messages.

The RMA Defendants did not do so. First, Staley and Wilson did not suspend the auto-erase function on their phones. Nor did they put in place a litigation hold to ensure that they preserved text messages. The principles of the “standard reasonableness framework” require a party to “suspend its routine document retention/destruction policy and put in place a ‘litigation hold’ to ensure the preservation of relevant documents.” Steves and Sons, Inc. v. JELD-WEN, Inc., 327 F.R.D. 96, 108 (E.D. Va. 2018) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). It takes, at most, only a few minutes to disengage the auto-delete function on a cell phone. It is apparent, based on Staley’s affidavit, that he and Wilson could have taken advantage of relatively simple options to ensure that their text messages were backed up to cloud storage. (ECF No. 395, pp. 7-9). These processes would have cost the RMA Defendants little, particularly in comparison to the importance of the issues at stake and the amount in controversy here. Failure to follow the simple steps detailed above alone is sufficient to show that Defendants acted unreasonably.

Pgs. 8-9

But that is not all the RMA Defendants did and did not do. Most troubling of all, they wiped and destroyed their phones after Deliverance and RMA had been sued, and, in the second instance for Wilson, after the Court ordered the parties to preserve all relevant electronic information, after the parties had entered into an agreement regarding the preservation and production of ESI, and after Plaintiffs had sent Defendants a letter alerting them to the fact they needed to produce their text messages. As Plaintiffs note, had Staley and Wilson not destroyed their phones, it is possible that Plaintiffs might have been able to recover the missing text messages by use of the “cloud” function or through consultation with a software expert. But the content will never be known because of Staley and Wilson’s intentional acts. The RMA Defendants’ failure to even consider whether Staley and Wilson’s phones might have discoverable information before destroying them was completely unreasonable. This is even more egregious because litigation had already commenced.

Pg. 9

It is obvious, based on text messages that other parties produced in this litigation, that Staley and Wilson used their personal cell phones to conduct the business of RMA and Deliverance. It is not Plaintiffs’ responsibility to question why RMA Defendants did not produce any text messages; in fact, it would be reasonable for Plaintiffs to assume that Defendants’ failure to do so was on account of the fact that no such text messages existed. This is because the RMA Defendants are the only ones who would know the extent that they used their personal cell phones for RMA and Deliverance business at the time they knew or should have reasonably known that litigation was not just possible, but likely, or after Plaintiffs filed suit or served their discovery requests.

Furthermore, the RMA Defendants do not get to select what evidence they want to produce, or from what sources. They must produce all responsive documents or seek relief from the court. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c) (outlining process for obtaining protective order).

Pg. 12

Having concluded that the RMA Defendants did not take reasonable steps to preserve and in fact intended to destroy relevant ESI, the Court must next consider whether the lost ESI can be restored or replaced from any other source. Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e).

Pg. 13

While it is true that Plaintiffs have obtained text messages that Boxill and other parties sent to or received from Staley and Wilson, that does not mean that all responsive text messages have been recovered or that a complete record of those conversations is available. In particular, because Wilson and Staley wiped and destroyed their phones, Plaintiffs are unable to recover text messages that the two individuals sent only to each other. Nor can they recover text messages that Staley and Wilson sent to third parties to whom Plaintiff did not send Rule 45 subpoenas (likely because they were not aware that Wilson or Staley communicated with those persons). The RMA Defendants do not dispute that text messages sent between Staley and Wilson are no longer recoverable.  . . .

At most, Plaintiffs now can obtain only “scattershot texts and [e-mails],” rather than “a complete record of defendants’ written communications from defendants themselves.” First Fin. Sec., Inc. v. Lee, No. 14 cv-1843, 2016 WL 881003 *5 (D. Minn. Mar. 8, 2016). The Court therefore finds that the missing text messages cannot be replaced or restored by other sources.

Pgs. 13-14

There is no doubt that Plaintiffs are prejudiced by the loss of the text messages. Prejudice exists when spoliation prohibits a party from presenting evidence that is relevant to its underlying case. Victor Stanley, 269 F.R.D. at 532. As set forth above, in the Court’s discussion regarding their ability to replace or restore the missing information, Plaintiffs are left with an incomplete record of the communications that Defendants had with both each other and third parties. Neither the Court nor Plaintiffs can know what ESI has been lost or how significant that ESI was to this litigation. The RMA Defendants’ claim that no prejudice has occurred is “wholly unconvincing,” given that “it is impossible to determine precisely what the destroyed documents contained or how severely the unavailability of these documents might have prejudiced [Plaintiffs’] ability to prove the claims set forth in [their] Complaint.” Telectron, Inc. v. Overhead Door Corp., 116 F.R.D. 107, 110 (S.D. Fl. 1987); see also Multifeeder Tech., Inc. v. British Confectionary Co. Ltd, No. 09-cv-1090, 2012 WL 4128385 *23 (D. Minn. Apr. 26, 2012) (finding prejudice because Court will never know what ESI was destroyed and because it was undisputed that destroying parties had access to relevant information), report and recommendation adopted in part and rejected in part by 2012 WL 4135848 (D. Minn. Sept. 18, 2012). Plaintiffs are now forced to go to already existing discovery and attempt to piece together what information might have been contained in those messages, thereby increasing their costs and expenses. Sanctions are therefore appropriate under Rule 37(e)(1).

Sanctions are also appropriate under Rule 37(e)(2) because the Court finds that the RMA Defendants acted with the intent to deprive Plaintiffs of the evidence. “Intent rarely is proved by direct evidence, and a district court has substantial leeway to determine intent through consideration of circumstantial evidence, witness credibility, motives of the witnesses in a particular case, and other factors.” Morris v. Union Pacific R.R., 373 F.3d 896, 901 (8th Cir. 2004). There need not be a “smoking gun” to prove intent. Auer v. City of Minot, 896 F.3d 854, 858 (8th Cir. 2018). But there must be evidence of “a serious and specific sort of culpability” regarding the loss of the relevant ESI. Id.

Pgs. 15-16

The Court can draw only one conclusion from this set of circumstances: that they acted with the intent to deprive Plaintiffs from using this information. Rule 37(e)(2) sanctions are particularly appropriate as to Wilson, RMA, and Deliverance for this reason as well.

Pg. 17

The Court believes that Plaintiffs’ request for an order presuming the evidence destroyed was unfavorable to the RMA Defendants and/or for an adverse inference instruction may well be justified. But given the fact that discovery is still on-going, the record is not yet closed, and the case is still some time from trial, the Court believes it more appropriate to defer consideration of those sanctions to a later date, closer to trial. See Monarch Fire Protection Dist. v. Freedom Consulting & Auditing Servs., Inc., 644 F.3d 633, 639 (8th Cir. 2011) (holding that it is not an abuse of discretion to defer sanction considerations until trial). At that point, the trial judge will have the benefit of the entire record and supplemental briefing from the parties regarding the parameters of any such instruction or presumption.

The Court will, however, order the RMA Defendants to pay monetary sanctions pursuant to Rules 37(b), and 37(e) and the Court’s pretrial scheduling orders.

Pgs. 18-19

The Court will therefore order, pursuant to Rules 37(b)(2)(C), 37(e)(1), and 37(e)(2) and the Court’s pretrial scheduling orders, the RMA Defendants to pay reasonable expenses, including attorney’s fees and costs, that Plaintiffs incurred as a result of the RMA Defendants’ misconduct. The Court will order Plaintiffs to file a submission with the Court detailing such expenses and allow the RMA Defendants the opportunity to respond to that submission. In addition, pursuant to Rule 37(e)(2) and the Court’s pretrial scheduling order, the Court will also order the RMA Defendants to pay into the Court a fine of $10,000. fn3 This amount is due within 90 days of the date of this Order.

Pg. 20

Let’s close with the original music of Prince.

 

 

5 Comments | Evidence, Lawyers Duties, New Rules, Spoliation/Sanctions, Technology | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ralph Losey

It’s Mueller Time! The Emergence of a New Legal Service Based on Artificial Intelligence

January 29, 2019

It’s Mueller Time! I predict we will be hearing this call around the world for decades, including boardrooms. Organizations will decide to investigate themselves on sensitive issues before the government does, or before someone sues them and triggers formal discovery. Not always, but sometimes, they will do so by appointing their own independent counsel to check on concerns. The Boards of tomorrow will not look the other way. If Robert Muller himself later showed up at their door, they would be ready. They would thank their G.C. that they had already cleaned house.

Most companies who decide it is Mueller Time, will probably not investigate themselves in the traditional “full calorie” Robert Muller way, as good as that is. Instead, they will order a less expensive, AI based investigation, a Mueller Lite. The “full calorie” traditional legal investigation is very expensive, slow and leaky. It involves many people and linear document review. The AI Assisted alternative, the Mueller Lite, will be more attractive because of its lower cost. It will still be an independent investigation, but will rely primarily on internal data and artificial intelligence, not expensive attorneys.

I call this E-Vestigations, for electronic investigations. It is a new type of legal service made possible by a specialized type of AI called “Predictive Coding” and newly perfected Hybrid Multimodal methods of machine training.

Mueller Lite E-Vestigations Save Money

Robert Mueller investigations typically cost millions and involves large teams of expensive professionals. AI Assisted investigations are cheap by comparison. That is because they emphasize company data and AI search of the data, mostly the communications, and need so few people to carry out. This new kind of investigation allows a company to quietly look into and take care of its own problems. The cost savings from litigation avoidance, and bad publicity, can be compelling. Plus it is the right thing to do..

E-Vestigations will typically be a quarter the cost of a traditional Mueller style, paper investigations. It may even be far less than that.  Project fees depend on the data itself (volume and “messiness”) and the “information need” of the client (simple or complex). The competitive pricing of the new service is one reason I predict it will explode in popularity. This kind of dramatic savings is possible because most of the time consuming relevance sorting and document ranking work is delegated to the AI.

The computer “reads” or reviews at nearly the speed of light and is 100% consistent. But it has no knowledge on its own. An idiot savant. The AI cannot do anything without its human handlers and trainers. It is basically a learning machine designed to sort large collections of texts into binary sets, typically relevant or irrelevant.

The human investigators read much slower and sometimes make mistakes (plus they like to get compensated), but they are absolutely indispensable. Someday the team of humans may get even smaller, but we are already down to around seven or fewer people per investigation. Compare that to the hundreds involved in a traditional Muller style document review.

Proactive “Peace of Mind” Investigations

This new legal service allows concerned management to proactively investigate upon the first indications of possible wrong-doing. It allows you to have greater assurance that you really know what is going on in your organization. Management or the Board then retains an independent team of legal experts to conduct the quick E-Vestigation. The team provides subject matter expertise on the suspected problem and uses active machine learning to quickly search and analyze the data. They search for preliminary indications of what happened, if anything. This kind of search is ideal for sensitive legal inquiries. It gives management the information needed without breaking the bank or publicizing the results.

This New Legal Service Is Built Around AI

E-Vestigations are a pre-litigation legal service that relies heavily on artificial intelligence, but not entirely. Investigations like this are very complex. They are nowhere near a fully automated process, and as mentioned the AI is really just a learning machine that knows nothing except how to learn document relevance. The service still needs legal experts, but a much smaller team

AI assisted investigations such as E-Vestigations have five compelling positive traits:

  1. Cost
  2. Speed
  3. Stealthiness
  4. Confidentiality
  5. Accuracy.

This article introduces the new service, discusses these five positive traits and provides  background for my prediction that many organizations will order AI assisted investigations in the coming years. In fact, due to the disappearing trial, I predict that E-Vestigations will someday take the lead from Litigation in many law firms. This prediction of the future, like most, requires a preliminary journey into the past, to see the longer causal line of events. That comes next, but feel to skip the next three sections until you come to the heading, What is an E-Vestigation?

King Litigation Is Dead

The glory days of litigation are over. All trial lawyers who, like me, have lived through the last forty years of legal practice, have seen it change dramatically. Litigation has moved from a trial and discovery practice, where we saw each other daily in court, to a discovery, motion and mediation practice where we communicate by email and occasional calls.

Although some “trial dogs” will not admit it, we all know that the role of trials has greatly diminished in modern practice. Everything settles. Ninety-nine percent (99%) of federal court civil cases settle without trial. Although my current firm is a large specialty practice, and so is an exception, in most law firms trials are very rare. A so-called “Trial Practice” of a major firm could go years without having an actual trial. I have seen it happen in many law firms. Good lawyers for sure, but they do not really “do trials,” they do trial preparation.

For example, when I started practicing law in 1980 “dispute resolution” was king in most law firms. It was called the “Litigation Department” and usually attracted the top legal talent. It brought in strong revenue and big clients. Every case in the top firms was either a “Bet the Farm” type, or a little case for kiddie lawyer training, we had no form-practice. Friedmann & Brown, “Bet the Farm” Versus “Law Factory”: Which One Works? (Geeks and Law, 2011).

The opposite, “Commodity Litigation,” was rare; typically just something for some divorce lawyers, PI lawyers, criminal lawyers and bankruptcy lawyers. These were not the desired specialties in the eighties, to put it mildly. Factory like practices like that did not pay that well (honest ones anyway) and were boring to most graduates of decent law schools. This has not changed much until recently, when AI has made certain Commodity practices far more interesting and desirable. See Joshua Kubicki, The Emerging Competitive Frontier in Biglaw is Practice Venturing (Medium, 1/24/19).

Aside from the less desirable Commodity practice law firms, most litigators in the eighties would routinely take a case to trial. Fish or Cut Bait was a popular saying. Back then Mediation was virtually unknown. Although a majority of cases did eventually settle, a large minority did not. That meant physically going to court, wearing suits and ties every day, and verbal sparing. Lots of arguments and talk about evidence. Sometimes it meant some bullying and physical pushing too, if truth be told. It was a rough and tumble legal world in the eighties, made up in many parts of the U.S. almost entirely of white men. Many were smokers, including the all-white bench.

Ah, the memories. Some of the Litigation attorneys were real jerks, to put it mildly. But only a few were suspected crooked and could not be trusted. Most were honest and could be. We policed our own and word got around about a bad apple pretty fast. Their careers in town were then soon over, one way or the other. Many would just move away or, if they had roots, become businessmen. There were trials a plenty in both the criminal and civil sides.The trials could be dramatic spectacles. The big cases were intense.

Emergence of Mediation

But the times were a changing. In the nineties and first decade of the 21st Century, trials quickly disappeared. Instead, Mediation started to take over. I know, I was in the first group of lawyers ever to be certified as a Mediator of High Technology disputes in 1989. All types of cases began to settle earlier and with less preparation. I have seen cases settle at Mediation where none of the attorneys knew the facts. They just knew what their clients told them. Even more often, only one side was prepared a knew the facts. The other was just “shooting from the hip.”

At trial the unprepared were quickly demolished by the facts, the evidence. At Mediation you can get away with it. The evidence is often just one side’s contention. Why bother to learn the record when you can just BS your way through a mediation? The truth is what I say it is, nothing more. There is no cross-exam. Mediation is a “liars heaven,” although a good mediator can plow through that.

What happened to all the Trial Lawyers you might ask? Many became Mediators, including several of my good friends. A few started specializing in Mediation advocacy, where psychodrama and math are king (typically division). Mediation has become the everyday “Commodity” practice and trials are now the “Bet the Farm” rarity.

With less than one-percent of federal cases going to trial, it is a complete misnomer to keep calling ourselves Trial Lawyers. I know I have stopped calling myself that. Like it or not, that is reality. Our current system is designed to settle. It has become a relativistic opinion fest. It is not designed to determine final, binding objective truth. It is not designed to make findings of fact. It is instead designed to mediate ever more ingenious ways to split the baby. We no longer focus on the evidence, on the objective truth of what happened. We have lost our way.

Justice without Truth is Destabilizing

Justice without Truth is a mockery of Justice, a Post-Modern mockery at that, one where everything is relative. This is called Subjectivism, where one person’s truth is as good as another’s. All is opinion.

This relativistic kind of thinking was, and still is in most Universities, the dominant belief among academics. Truth is supposed to be relative and subjective, not objective, unless it happens to be science. Hard science is supposed to have a monopoly on objectivity. Unfortunately, this relativistic way of thinking has had some unintended consequences. It has led to the kind of political instability that we see in the U.S. today. That is the basic insight of a new book by Pulitzer Prize winner, Michiko Kakutani. The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump (Penguin, 2018). Also see Hanlin, Postmodernism didn’t cause Trump. It explains him. (Washington Post, 9/2/18).

Truth is truth. It is not just what the company with the biggest wallet says it is. It is not an opinion. Objective truth, the facts based on hard evidence, is real. It is not just an opinion. This video ad below by CNN was cited by Kakutani in her Death of Truth. It makes the case for objectivity in a simple, common sense manner. The political overtones are obvious.

There is a place for the insights of Post-Modern Subjectivism, especially as it concerns religion. But for now the objective-subjective pendulum has swung too far into the subjective. The pause between directions is over and it is starting to swing back. Facts and truth are becoming important again. This point in legal history will, I predict, be marked by the Mueller investigation. Evidence is once again starting to sing in our justice system. It is singing the body electric. The era of E-Vestigations has begun!

What are E-Vestigations?

E-Vestigations are confidential, internal investigations that focus on search of client data and metadata. They uses Artificial Intelligence to search and retrieve information relative to the client’s requested investigation, their information need.  We use an AI machine training method that we call Hybrid Multimodal Predictive Coding 4.0. The basic search method is explained in the open-sourced TAR Course, but the Course does not detail how the method can be used in this kind of investigation.

E-Vestigation is done outside of Litigation and court involvement, usually to try to anticipate and avoid Litigation. Are the rumors true, or are the allegations just a bogus attempt to extort a settlement? E-Vestigations are by nature private, confidential investigations, not responses to formal discovery. AI Assisted investigations rely primarily on what the data says, not the rumors and suspicions, or even what some people say. The analysis of vast volumes of ESI is possible, even with millions of files, because e-Vestigations use Artificial Intelligence, both passive and active machine learning. Otherwise, the search of large volumes of ESI takes too long and is too prone to inaccuracies. That is the main reason this approach is far less expensive than traditional “full calorie” Muller type investigations.

The goal of E-Vestigation is to find quick answers based on the record. Interviews may not be required in many investigations and when they are, they are quick and, to the interviewee, mysterious. The answers to the information needs of a client are sometimes easily found. Sometimes you may just find the record is silent as to the issue at hand, but that silence itself often speaks volumes.

The findings and report made at the end of the E-Vestigation may clear up suspicion, or it may trigger a deeper, more detailed investigation. Sometimes the communications and other information found may require an immediate, more drastic response. One way or another, knowing provides the client with legitimate peace of mind.

The electronic evidence is most cases will be so overwhelming (we know what you said, to whom and when) that testimony will be superfluous, a formality. (We have your communications, we know what you did, we just need you to clear up a few details and help us understand how it ties into guys further up the power chain. That help will earn you a lenient plea deal.) This is what is happening right now, January 2019, with the investigation of Robert Mueller.

Defendants in criminal cases will still plea out, but based on the facts, on truth, not threats. Defendants in civil cases will do the same. So will the plaintiff in civil cases who makes unsubstantiated allegations. Facts and truth protect the innocent. Most of that information will be uncovered in computer systems. In the right hands, E-Vestigations can reveal all. It is a proactive alternative to Litigation with expensive settlements. The AI data review features of  E-Vestigations make it far less expensive than a Muller investigations.  Is it Mueller Time for your organization?

Robert Mueller never need ask a question of a witness to which he does not already know the answer based on the what the record said. The only real question is whether the witness will further compound their problems by lying. They often do. I have seen that several times in depositions of parties in civil cases. It is sheer joy and satisfaction for the questioner to watch the ethically challenged party sink into the questioner’s hidden traps. The “exaggerating witness” will often smile, just slightly, thinking they have you fooled, just like their own attorney. You smile back knowing their lies are now of record and they have just pounded another nail into their coffin.

E-Vestigations may lead to confrontation, even arrest, if the investigation confirms suspicions. In civil matters it may lead to employee discharge or accusations against a competitor. It may lead to an immediate out-of-court settlement. In criminal matters it may lead to indictment and an informed plea and sentencing. It may also lead to Litigation in civil matters with formal, more comprehensive discovery, but at least the E-Vestigating party will have a big head start. They will know the facts. They will know what specific information to ask for from the opposing side.

Eventually, civil suits will not be filed that often, except to memorialize a party’s agreement, such as a consent to a judgment. It will, instead, be a world where information needs are met in a timely manner and Litigation is thereby avoided. A world where, if management needs to know something, such as whether so and so is a sexual predator, they can find out, fast. A world where AI in the hands of a skilled legal team can mine internal data-banks, such as very large collections of employee emails and texts, and find hidden patterns. It may find what was suspected or may lead to surprise discoveries.

The secret mining of data, otherwise known as “reading other people’s emails without their knowledge” may seem like an egregious breach of privacy, but it is not, at least not in the U.S. under the computer use policies of most groups. Employees typically consent to this search as a condition of employment or computer use. Usually the employer owns all of the equipment searched. The employee has no ownership, nor privacy rights in the business related communications of the employer.

The use of AI assistants in investigations limits the exposure of irrelevant information to humans. First, only a few people are involved in the investigation at all because the AI does the heavy lifting. Second, the human reviewers are outside of the organization. Third, the AI does almost all of the document review. Only the AI reads all of the communications, not the lawyers. The humans look at far less than one percent of the data searched in most projects. They spend most of their time in study of the documents the AI has already identified as likely relevant.

The approach of limited investigations, of going in and out of user data only to search in separate, discreet investigations, provides maximum confidentiality to the users. The alternative, which some organizations have already adopted, is constant surveillance by AI of all communications. You can predict future behavior that way, to a point and within statistical limitations of accuracy. The police in some cities are already using constant AI surveillance to predict crimes and allocate resources accordingly.

I find this kind of constant monitoring to be distasteful. For me, it is too Big Brother and oppressive to have AI looking at my every email. It stifles creativity and, I imagine, if this was in place, would make me overly  cautious in my communications. Plus, I would be very concerned about software error. If some baby AI is always on, always looking for suspicious patterns, it could make mistakes. The programming of the software almost certainly contains a number of hidden biases of the programmers, typically young white dudes.

The one-by-one investigation approach advocated here provides for more privacy protection. With E-Vestigations the surveillance is focused and time limited. It is not general and ongoing.

Five Virtues of E-Vestigations

Although I am not going to go into the proprietary details here of our E-Vestigations service (contact me through my law firm if you want to know more), I do want to share what I think are the five most important traits of our AI (robotic) assisted reviews: economics, confidentiality, stealth, speed and accuracy.

Confidentiality:

  • Complete Secrecy.
  • Artificial Intelligence means fewer people are required.
  • Employee Privacy Rights Respected.
  • Data need never leave corporate premises using specialized tools from our vendor.
  • Attorney-Client Privilege & Work Product protected.

Stealthiness:

  • Under the Radar Investigation.
  • Only some in client IT need know.
  • Sensitive projects. Discreet.
  • Stealth forensic copy and review of employee  data.
  • Attorneys review off-site, unseen, via encrypted  online connection.
  • Private interviews; only where appropriate.

Speed:

  • Techniques designed for quick results, early assessments.
  • Informal, high-level investigations. Not Litigation Discovery.
  • High Speed Document Review with AI help.
  • Example: Study of Clinton’s email server (62,320 files, 30,490 disclosed – 55,000 pgs.) is, at most, a one-week project with a first report after one day.

Accuracy:

  • Objective Findings and Analysis.
  • Independent Position.
  • Specialized Expertise.
  • Answers provided with probability range limitations.
  • Known Unknowns (Rumsfeld).

Clients are impressed with the cost of E-Vestigations, as compared to traditional investigations. That is important, of course, but the speed of the work is what impresses many. We produce results, use a flat fee to get there, and do so very FAST.

Certainly we can move much faster than the FBI reviewing email using its traditional methods of expert linear review. The Clinton email investigations took forever by our standards. Yet, Clinton’s email server had only 62,320 files, of which 30,490 were disclosed (around 55,000 pages.) This is, at most, a one-week E-Vestigations project with a first report after one day. Our projects are much larger. They involve review of hundreds of thousands of emails, or hundreds of millions. It does not make a big difference in cost because the AI, who works for free, is doing the heavy lifting of actual studying of all this text.

Most federal agencies, including the FBI, do not have the software, the search knowledge, nor attorney skills for this new type of AI assisted investigation. They also do not have the budget to acquire good AI for assist. Take a look at this selection from the official FBI collection of Clinton email and note that the FBI and US Attorneys office in Alexandra Virginia were communicating by fax in September 2015!

State and federal government agencies are not properly funded and cannot compete with private industry compensation. The NSA may well have an A-Team for advanced search, but not the other agencies. As we know, the NSA has their hands full just trying to keep track of the Russians and other enemies interfering with our elections, not to mention the criminals and terrorists.

Unintended Consequence of Mediation Was to Insert Subjectivism into the Law

As discussed, the rise and commoditization of Mediation over the last twenty years has had unintended consequences. The move from the courtroom to the  mediator’s office in turn caused the Law to move from objective to subjective opinion. Discussion of the consequences of mediation, and the subjectivist attitude it brings, complicates my analysis of the death of Litigation, but is necessary. Litigation did not turn into private investigation work. One did not flow into another. Litigation is not changing directly into private Investigations, AI assisted or not. Mediation, and its unexpected consequences, is the intervening stage.

1. Litigation → 2. Mediation → 3. AI Assisted Investigations

Mediation brought down Litigation, at least the all important Trial part of Litigation, not AI or private investigations. There is never a judge making rulings at a mediation. There are only attorneys and assertions of what. Somebody must be lying, but with Mediation you never know who. Lawyers found they could settle cases without all that. They did not need the judge at all. At mediation there are no findings of fact, no rulings of law, just droll agreements as to who will pay how much to whom.

The next stage I predict of AI Assisted Investigations is filling a gap caused by the unintended consequence of Mediation. Mediation was never intended to spawn AI Assisted Investigations, no such thing even existed. It was not possible. We did not have the technology to do something like this. The forces driving the advent of AI Assisted Investigations, which I call E-Vestigations, have little to do with Mediation directly, but are instead the result of rapid advances in technology.

Mediation was intended to encourage settlement and reduce expensive trials. It has been wildly successful at that; exceeded all expectations. But this surprise success has also led to unexpected negative consequences. It has led to a new subjectivistic attitude in Litigation. It has led to the decline of evidence and an over-relativistic attitude where Truth was dethroned.

Most of my Mediator friends strongly disagree, but I have never heard a compelling argument to the contrary. The death of the trial is a stunning development. But mediation has had another impact. One that I have not seen discussed previously. It has not only killed trials, it has killed the whole notion of objective truth. It has led to a mediation mind-set where the “merits” are just a matter of opinion. Where cost of defense and the time value of money are the main items of discussion.

That foreseeable defect has led to the unforeseeable development of an AI Assisted alternative to Litigation. It is led to E-Vestigations. AI can now be used to help lawyers investigate and quickly find out the true facts of a situation.

Many lawyers who litigate today do not care what “really happened.” Very post-modern of them, but come on? A few lawyers just blindly believe whatever damned fool thing their client tells them. Most just say we will never know the absolute truth anyway, so let us just try our best to resolve the dispute and do what’s fair without any test of the evidence. They try to do justice with just a passing nod to the evidence, to the truth of what happened. I am not a fan. It goes against all of my core teachings as a young commercial litigation attorney who prepared and tried cases. It goes against my core values and belief. My opinion is that it is not all just opinion, that there is truth.

I object to that mediation, relativistic approach. After a life in the Law chasing smoking guns and taking depositions, I know for a fact that witnesses lie, that their memories are unreliable, all too human. But I also know that the writings made by and to these same witness often expose the lies, or, more charitably put, expose the errors in human memory. Fraudsters are human and almost always make mistakes. It is an investigator’s job to check the record to find the slip-ups in the con. (I dread the day when I have to try to trace a AI fraudster!)

I have been chasing and exposing con-men most of my adult life. I defended a few too. In my experience the truth has a way of finding its way out.

This is not an idealistic dream in today’s world of information floods. There is so much information, the real difficulty is in finding the important bits, the smoking guns, the needles. The evidence is usually there, but not yet found. The real challenge today is not in gathering the evidence, it is in searching for the key documents, finding the signal in the noise.

Conclusion

Objective accounts of what happened in the past are not only possible, they are probable in today’s Big Data world. Your Alexa or Google speakers may have part of the record. So too may your iWatch or Fitbit. Soon your refrigerator will too. Data is everywhere. Privacy is often an illusion. (Sigh.) The opportunity of liars and other scoundrels to “get away with it” and fool people is growing smaller every day. Fortunately, if lawyers can just learn a few new evidence search skills, they can use AI to help them find the information they need.

Juries and judges, for the most part, believe in objective truth. They are quite capable of sorting through competing versions and getting at the truth. Good judges and lawyers (and jurors) can make sure that happens.

As mentioned, many academics and sophisticates believe otherwise, that there is no such a thing as objective truth. They believe instead in Relativism. They are wrong. 

As Michiko Kakutani said in her book, The Death of Truth:

The postmodernist argument that all truths are partial (and a function of one’s perspective) led to the related argument that there are many legitimate ways to understand or represent an event. . . .

Without commonly agreed-upon facts — not Republican facts and Democratic facts; not the alternative facts of today’s silo-world — there can be no rational debate over policies, no substantive means of evaluating candidates for political office, and no way to hold elected officials accountable to the people. Without truth, democracy is hobbled. The founders recognized this, and those seeking democracy’s survival must recognize it today.

It is possible to find the truth, objective truth. All is not just opinion and allegations. Accurate forensic reconstruction is possible today in ways that we could never have imagined before. So is AI assisted search. The record of what is happening grows larger every day. That record written electronically at the time of the events in question is far more reliable than our memories. We can find the truth, but for that need to look primarily to the documents, not the testimony. That is not new. That is wisdom upon which almost all trial lawyers agree.

The truth is attainable, but requires dedication and skilled efforts by everyone on a legal team to find it. It requires knowledge of course, and a proven method, but also impartiality, discipline, intelligence and a sense of empathy. It requires experience with what the AI can do, and just as important, what it cannot do. It requires common sense. Lawyers have that. Jurors have that.

Surely only a weak-minded minority are fooled by today’s televised liars. Most competent trial lawyers could persuade a sequestered jury to convict them. And convict they will, but that still will not cause of rebirth of Litigation. Its’ glory days are over. So too is its killer, Mediation, although its death will take longer (Mediation may not even have peaked yet).

Evidence speaks louder than any skilled mediator. Let the truth be told. Let the chips fall where they may. King Litigation is dead. Long live the new King, confidential, internal AI assisted E-Vestigations.

3 Comments | Evidence, informaton, knowledge, Lawyers Duties, Metadata, New Rules, Related Legal Webs, Review, Search, Spoliation/Sanctions, Technology, VENDORS, wisdom | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ralph Losey

12 Days of Christmas: What Do You Do When Your Client Sends To You? – Part Two

December 24, 2018

In Part Two we consider the last seven gifts from the beloved client and how to deal with the problems and opportunities these presents present. Suggest you read Part One of this 2018 Christmas blog first. It has the full poem and discussion of the first five e-Discovery Gifts of Christmas.

What do you do
When a client sends to you

Six Gigabytes of ESI for production that They determined are the only relevant few.

The problem here is not the six gigabytes of data to produce. That is easy, routine. The problem is how that ESI was determined to be relevant. Apparently here the client did it. And if this is a corporate client, it may mean the actual person or persons who did it are unknown. Maybe the client simply asked the persons accused to pick out and send the relevant evidence of the defense. Maybe they even invited the fox into the hen-house? What were the circumstances of the identification of the six gigabytes for review? What custodians? What time filter? Other culling?

The issue here is reasonability of search effort. It arises out of Rule 26(g) and the requirement that a search in response to a request for ESI must be reasonable. Good faith is presumed under the Rules because attorneys of record in the court proceeding are in charge of the discovery effort. They have a duty to the court in which they are allowed to appear as a member of the Court’s Bar. The trial attorneys may delegate to specialized experts, to be sure, but counsel of record signing the 26(g) response is the attorney ultimately responsible.

That is the sound ethical basis for the presumption of good faith. Licensed lawyers did it, not only that, they appeared of record in the court and as such are subject to the discipline and sanctions of the court. That presumption of good faith inherent in Rule 26(g) can be overcome and rebutted in circumstances where the responsible trial attorney, and his work-product experts, do not know what happened. Other facts may suggest bad faith, even intentionally negligent efforts. Half-hearted efforts suggest no real desire to find evidence that might hurt your case. That is not good.

When this kind of gift is brought to you it should trigger a series of questions. Hopefully you turn to your trusted check-list on questions to ask. Were the PSTs of the following custodians collected? Check. Were the standard hybrid multimodal ESI searches used? Check.  Who was in charge? Etc.

You audit the efforts made and analyze what additional actions, if any, may still be required to satisfy your legal and ethical responsibilities. If you are satisfied, then make the production and sign the Rule 26(g) certification. You are counsel of record and it is your license to practice law on the line.

__________

What do you do
When a client sends to you

Seven important emails that the opposing party omitted from the production to you?

What a great gift. This may be the evidence you need, literally, to prove that the other side is cheating on their discovery obligations, maybe even trying to hide the ball. That is game-changing news. Verify and authenticate first, as we will discuss with twelfth present. After you authenticate, then you may want to keep it secret for a while. See if gotcha-traps of counter-discovery might be possible to get them to lie even more, to dig the grave deeper. This is in accord with the general examination principle that when a witness is lying, go along with it, pretend you believe, and maybe they will embellish further under oath. Then, when you have their detailed lie as sworn testimony under oath, confront them with the lies. Every good lawyer deserves a Perry Mason moment. Every good liar in turn deserves their own Mueller moment of impeachment.

Use this information to try to flush out any fraud. And if none exists, which fortunately is still typical, and this prior omission by the producing party is usually an innocent (although colossal) mistake, then see if you can find out what happened.

Perhaps other documents important to the case still remain to be found? The aim is to force a redo and cure of the error, all to be paid for by the erring, producing party.

__________

What do you do
When a client sends to you

Eight i-Phone Pluses with dirty pictures to view?

Get it into forensic hands as soon as possible. Do not let any metadata be altered accidentally. Let an expert find the pictures on the phone and get them into a database for your review. Limit your work to the lawyer part, decide if they are “dirty” as the client said, and what that means to your case. Are they what you expected? Hope for? Feared? Or did you have no idea any evidence like this would be forthcoming, not to mention why? The forensic player must be included, must be inserted into the start of the chain of custody. That way you can make sure that the evidence coming out of these eight i-Phones is admissible.

What if those eight phones, which are in fact all sophisticated computers with large flash drives, have hundreds of thousands of photo files on them? What if the search for the relevant few images of any significance to the case would be a long and laborious process? Traditional TAR will not help with pure image search because it searches text alone. Is there smart facial recognition software that might be useful? Other software? Alternative to straight linear review? Is this really worth the effort? What suggestions do others have? Client? Opposing counsel? The court?

__________

What do you do
When a client sends to you

Nine portable hard-drives connected to custodian CPUs?

Same drill as with the iPhones, get all this data, and remember, there could be hundreds of millions of files with that many USB drives, into a forensic engineer’s hands ASAP. Preserve, cull and get some of the ESI into a database for review. Find the needles of important ESI in the vast haystacks of irrelevant data.

Think about the review, the cost and most prudent approach. Design a search process for this particular data that uses your standard tools and methods to meet the needs of the case. Analyze the proportionality factors. Improve your understanding of the search target. That is critical. How does that impact the outcome of the dispute? Do the math and start getting your hands into the digital mud, all at once, and all ASAP. Prevalence samples anyone? How many needles are there? That’s e-discovery for you, where all the effort should be front-loaded.

__________

What do you do
When a client sends to you

Ten back-up tapes with no labels to view?

First thing to do is get the labels and all other information from the client about these tapes. You don’t want to pay an outside vendor to tell you what is on the client’s tapes, but that is always possible if they are truly a mystery. Do they have to be preserved? Do they also have to be searched? Why?

Duplicate ESI is not relevant. You only need produce one copy of the same document. Thus back-up tapes are not usually discoverable under Rule 26(b)(2)(B). After all, they just contain copies. However, sometimes the back-up tape may be the only place where a file still remains. If that is the situation in your case, then these files need to be saved. They may also need to be retrieved and searched. A common example of this might include the entire Mailbox collection of an employee, key custodian, who left the company before the hold. All email and attachments of this key custodian could have been deleted in the ordinary course, except for copies on certain backup tapes. In this situation you may have to restore that one custodian’s PST files from the tape and review them.

__________

What do you do
When a client sends to you

Eleven Custodians with unfiltered data to purview?

Rejoice. The data is unfiltered so your techs get to do so, not the client’s IT. This way you can be sure that it is done right. You also do not have to worry about hidden filters, ones you did not know about or approve in advance. If it is global deduplication, for instance, no problem. You would want to do that anyway. But if it is keyword filtering, then look out. Easy to make mistakes at that, especially when not done by IT specialists. Better to test out keywords before you use them to eliminate ESI from review.

Testing and refining keywords is legal work because relevance is determined by legal analysis, not computer nor technical analysis. IT is notorious for sometimes exceeding their bounds and thinking they know best. When it comes to the Law, to the requirements of an adequate search, to relevance, client IT is out of their depth. That is your role as lawyer in a well functioning e-Discovery Team. Not sure, take a refresher of the TAR Course.

__________

What do you do
When a client sends to you

Twelve Word Docs on a hard drive
That are too good to be true?

When a “too good to be true” electronic documents are your present, inspect them very carefully, especially the metadata. It might be a fake. The smoking gun might be smoke and mirrors. Question your client about the background and origin of all ESI, but especially hot documents that appear unexpectedly and late in a case. You have a legal and ethical duty to do so. See Eg: Lawrence v. City of N.Y., Case No. 15cv8947 (SDNY, 7/27/18) copy linked (Judge William Pauley) (“This Opinion & Order showcases the importance of verifying a client’s representations.”). Also see: Model Rule of Professional Conduct 3.3, Duty of Candor Toward the Tribunal:

A lawyer shall not knowingly: (1) make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer; … (3) offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false. If a lawyer, the lawyer’s client, or a witness called by the lawyer, has offered material evidence and the lawyer comes to know of its falsity, the lawyer shall take reasonable remedial measures, including, if necessary, disclosure to the tribunal. A lawyer may refuse to offer evidence, other than the testimony of a defendant in a criminal matter, that the lawyer reasonably believes is false.

The official Comment to Rule 3.3 has some good insights into the purpose of this requirement:

[5] Paragraph (a)(3) requires that the lawyer refuse to offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false, regardless of the client’s wishes. This duty is premised on the lawyer’s obligation as an officer of the court to prevent the trier of fact from being misled by false evidence. A lawyer does not violate this Rule if the lawyer offers the evidence for the purpose of establishing its falsity.

6] If a lawyer knows that the client intends to testify falsely or wants the lawyer to introduce false evidence, the lawyer should seek to persuade the client that the evidence should not be offered. If the persuasion is ineffective and the lawyer continues to represent the client, the lawyer must refuse to offer the false evidence. If only a portion of a witness’s testimony will be false, the lawyer may call the witness to testify but may not elicit or otherwise permit the witness to present the testimony that the lawyer knows is false.

For more on this subject, see my recent article Judge Pauley Reminds Lawyers Of Their Duty To Verify Client Representations (e-Discovery Team, 10/14/18).

 

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