Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
Fullbright's 7th Annual Litigation Trends Survey
October 15, 2010
OK, as a marketer I chuckled to see this subject line on an e-mail I received on Monday: "EMBARGOED UNTIL WEDNESDAY, OCT. 13 – 12:01 a.m." You have to read an e-mail with that subject line, right?
Effective way to tee up the release of the report – and it was followed by an e-mail from my old friend Toby Brown. Sweet job of gassing up the PR vehicle!
This is always a fun survey to read, and I glow with pleasure when I read that litigation continues (after its economy-driven slump) to rise. Hard not to be pleased when your business is so closely tied to litigation though I know it's a guilty pleasure.
With respect to electronic discovery, some answers simply reaffirmed what we already knew. Most of the respondents believe that the scope of e-disocvery needs to be limited and that a litigant’s duty to preserve material in anticipation of litigation needs clarification.
70% of all respondents say e-discovery for civil actions needs to be curtailed in the U.S. More than two-thirds of U.S. respondents believe guidance in this area requires “some” or “substantial” clarification.
I was struck by how many respondents rely on custodians to preserve their own information (55%) though they may use other tools as well. They use a variety of techniques to preserve information, including suspending automatic deletion (55%); preserving everything in searchable databases (54%); and using automated search software (43%).
Unsurprisingly, more than 40% of all respondents report having encountered an actual or threatened dispute involving privacy and data protection. Of those respondents, 44% say their companies have encountered issues using third party vendors to collect and process data; 43% have encountered issues searching for data on company equipment used by employees; and 39% have encountered privacy and data protection issues when data is transferred from the European Union to the U.S. I have seen attorneys physically shudder when speaking the words "cross-border discovery."
Social media continues to be on the upswing with more than one-quarter of corporate counsel saying their company uses LinkedIn, while 22% of respondents use Twitter and 17% use Facebook. Roughly 25% report that their company has some sort of blog.
I'd love to see the next survey ask about social media archiving and whether the companies have had evidence from their social media sites introduced in litigation. Those numbers are clearly on the rise. Maybe next year???
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