Ride the Lightning

MAKING THE FEDERAL RULES REAL: LITIGATION MAGAZINE

September 21, 2007

Those who litigate are really well served by belonging to the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section. Though the Section does many, many things, I especially appreciate its Litigation magazine, which never fails to educate with wit and style. This is one magazine that never gathers dust on my desk. This month’s issue has an article especially useful for those who may be novices at dealing with electronic evidence under the new federal rules. By constructing an imaginary mail and wire fraud case, author S. Kirk Ingebretsen does a great job of taking you through the case step by step in "Crafting A Discovery Plan."  He references the new rules as he goes along so you can actually understand their relevance in a practical setting. I would gently disagree with his statement that native format evidence is more costly to review (it can be, but not usually, and it sure as heck avoids the sometimes massive costs of converting to TIFF or PDF with load files), but overall, this is an article that skillfully uses "make believe" to "make it real." Nice job!

If you belong to the ABA, you can access the article here: http://www.abanet.org/litigation/journal/

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