Document Type
Article
Abstract
A little over a decade ago, a state-of-the-art one-gigabyte disk drive cost nearly $1000. In November 2008, a Seagate 750 gigabyte drive could be purchased from an Internet retailer for around $140. Organizations have leveraged advances in storage technology to house enormous amounts of data which, in turn, provide a treasure trove of discoverable information to an adverse party. Whether the attorney is providing or requesting data during discovery, he may not sufficiently understand the technical architecture supporting the information central to the case. Thus, in the age of electronic discovery (e-Discovery) and complex, massive data stores, law firms and corporations alike need a new skill set—what the author terms the Information Technologist-Attorney (IT-Attorney)—to direct legal e-Discovery requests and oversee an electronic document strategy. The IT-Attorney would be conversant in both the law and in core Information Technology (IT) data storage methodologies and processes, and very well may have had a prior IT career. The position could more than offset its cost in sanction control, directed cost-shifting, and improved case management. Most importantly, the heightened legal duties placed upon counsel to locate and preserve information, and the extreme consequences for breaching those duties, mandate the technical vigilance of an IT-Attorney.
Part II of this Article looks briefly at the 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure related to e-Discovery and the current body of law from the oft-cited Zubulake rulings. Part III examines the IT-Attorney’s role in managing sanctions and penalties flowing from discovery orders of electronic data. Part IV looks at how the IT-Attorney can improve overall case management through directed cost-shifting, driving the discovery process and ensuring that electronic communications remain privileged. Part V concludes by summarizing the arguments supporting recruitment for in-house IT-Attorney skill set.
Recommended Citation
Philip Beatty,
The Genesis of the Information Technologist-Attorney in the Era of Electronic Discovery,
13 J. Tech. L. & Pol'y
(2008).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jtlp/vol13/iss2/5