How e-Discovery Learned to Live Without the 'e'.
by Ronald D. Davis, Ph.D.
General Counsel, ellwood Evidence Inc.
Recently, at a Law Society seminar she led, e-discovery lawyer Susan Nickle suggested that it’s time we lose the ‘e’ in e-discovery.
All discovery is e-’discovery’ nowadays. Most lawsuits are exclusively digital. No lawsuit is strictly paper-based. Except those where the Luddite lawyer has all the digital evidence printed out on dead trees.
Austin attorney Craig Ball echoed this point in a recent piece he wrote for the Law Technology News, 11 E-Discovery Tips for Judges and Lawyers. Tip number one, says Ball, is:
- Evidence is digital: Embrace it.
He goes on to say “Electronic evidence is the new normal, there is no going back.”
Both Nickle and Ball are spot on. The dawn of the digital era in evidence - in all of litigation - is over. The digital era is here. The digital future is the present.
We are no longer at the beginning of the marriage of technology and litigation. The wedding’s happened. The honeymoon’s over. The couple’s moved in together. The beginning has ended.
Lawyers need to feel at home with this.