Electronically Stored Infomation
Electronically Stored Information (ESI) is a specific definition for evidence in electronic format. Recent studies on business records show that up to 95 percent of all information created is in electronic format. In litigation, relevant ESI can exist in a number of different forms including computers, servers, backup media (tapes, external hard drives, CDs, DVDs, floppy disks, etc.) MP3 players, i-Pods and the Internet on sites designed for backups.
The new federal rules state that ESI is discoverable that has to be preserved and produced. Lawyers must manage ESI including how to request, protect, review and produce electronically stored information.
The sheer volume of information and the amount of duplicate documents can make the review and production process difficult and expensive for the producing side. E-discovery is a production process that prepares electronically stored information to cull out the duplicate documents in preparation. It is cheaper for a production process to prepare the documents then it is to have an attorney or paralegal look at duplicate documents.
E-discovery processes can further reduce the review volume through a keyword search. By targeting the database with keywords, documents can be pulled from the total volume.
A critical element of the production is that the ESI be produced by a Qualified Vendor with proven and defensible techniques to ensure that the process does not become an issue in court.
