Discovery is a crucial component of litigation because it allows attorneys to gather the evidence they need to prove or disprove any relevant facts or claims. 

Attorneys typically develop a “discovery plan,” which outlines potential sources of relevant information, what questions to ask, what documents to request, and the timing of the requests. Creating a discovery plan requires careful consideration of all facets of the case and provides an opportunity to develop an appropriate strategy. 

Electronic discovery, also referred to as eDiscovery or e-Discovery, addresses the identification, collection, preservation, and production of electronically stored information (“ESI”). The California Code of Civil Procedure defines “electronic” as, “relating to technology having electrical, magnetic, wireless, optical, electromagnetic, or similar capabilities.” (Code Civ. Proc. § 2016.020(d).) ESI is any “information that is stored in an electronic medium.” (Code Civ. Proc. § 2016.020(e).)

Given the abundant and pervasive nature of ESI, eDiscovery is an expanding and evolving area of law that often requires assistance from experts to ensure compliance with civil discovery laws as applied to ESI. 

Carden Rose develops discovery workflows, creates searches based on requests for production, runs search term efficiency reports, conducts privilege review

searches, builds predictive coding models, and prepares discovery productions.

Increasingly, lawyers seek ESI as part of their discovery plan and respond to requests for ESI. This commonly includes requests for items like emails, text messages, electronic medical records, and other data stored on digital devices. Carden Rose assists parties on both sides in generating a discovery plan and collecting information that is responsive to discovery requests. 

Carden Rose provides a unique benefit to lawyers by offering the potential to develop a more sophisticated and targeted electronic discovery plan, which is designed to identify more specific data and information that lies below the surface of email and documents.  

For example, an employee leaves company "A" and starts working for a competing company we will call "B." Company "A" files a claim that the ex-employee took intellectual property with him or her to use at company "B." As an attorney what are you going to ask from the ex-employee or company "B?" This is a common scenario in our tech industries today. For the employee to take the data he or she had to use other devices or services to complete the theft of information. A good discovery plan and request will identify those other devices prior to discovery and name those devices with specificity to include make, model and serial number if applicable or identify remote servers by MAC address and internet protocol address. 

A note to lawyers: We strongly recommend that lawyers engage with an expert before conducting discovery. Engaging an expert early in the strategic process can help lawyers pinpoint the information they need to request and ultimately save the client time and money, and ensure all possible evidence has been identified and preserved. An expert can greatly effect the scope of discovery by focusing it to more relative data sets or expanding the scope of the opposing side by a through forensic review when warranted. 

If you are engaged in a case that may include digital evidence, contact us today.