E-Discovery

What is E-Discovery?
 

E-Discovery (also called eDiscovery, electronic discovery or legal discovery) refers to any process in which electronic data is sought, located, secured and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case.

Today, on average, 96 percent of all documents created or received within an organization are in electronic format. While paper is not going away, it represents a minority of the total documents in an organization. In terms of electronic documents, email represents the majority; it has become the communication mechanism of choice. The average employee sends and receives more than 140 emails per day. Unlike paper, email tends to accumulate, quarter after quarter and year after year, and organizations are flooded with it.

Motions to discover electronic data are common in today’s world of litigation; yet companies are often unprepared to find electronically stored information (ESI), especially email. This lack of preparedness is driving up the cost of e-discovery and the cost of litigation in general.