(1 hour or 2 hour Seminar)
(Continuing Education Credit Available in Many Jurisdictions)

The goal of this two-hour course is to enrich the attendees’ knowledge of common computer systems and networks in use by corporations and government agencies throughout the United States and Canada.  Attendees will learn how to ask the right electronic discovery questions, to assess answers to those questions, and to decide if and when to seek technical assistance so that e-discovery errors are avoided.

As a direct consequence of lack of familiarity with computer technology and terminology, clients and counsel throughout the United States have been sanctioned by courts for destruction of electronically stored information (ESI) and unjustifiable discovery errors.  Electronic documents are not like paper documents.  Electronic documents are easily altered by inadvertent acts.  Additionally, computers automatically create their own important electronic data trains (including metadata) that do not normally appear on the monitor screen or on a paper print-out, and that are often inadvertently destroyed in the process of d-discovery production.

This course:

(i)    Summarizes the discovery duties of client and counsel under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure;
(ii)    Explains how discovery of electronic documents is not like discovery of paper documents;
(iii)    Provides an introduction to electronic terminology; and
(iv)    Presents a basic overview of how computers and networks create, store, alter, and destroy electronic documents.