Ride the Lightning

Secure Document Sharing in E-Discovery

October 9, 2013

Everyone knows it is a problem to securely share documents in e-discovery. We are seeing a deluge of folks turn to Dropbox to share documents. While it works (sort of), it is a kluge solution and often breaks the audit trail, not to mention presenting security risks.

As ever, my innovative friend Andy Wilson (he of the red sneakers) at Logikcull has been busy coming up with a solution. John and I took a test drive – it was simple, elegant and impressive.

Take the commonscenario of sharing documents with expert witnesses. Here's how it works today:a discovery attorney or paralegal will export the documentsfrom a discovery database. Then they will copy the documents to media, such asa DVD or hard drive (in some cases these documents are printed to paper, gasp!)before shipping them to an expert witness. Increasingly, these highlysensitive documents are going to an FTP site or a Dropbox account, making thechain of custody and auditing what's been done tough – or impossible.

Once documents leave thediscovery database they can no longer be tracked along with the otherdocuments. There is no document audit logging of who did what and when(i.e. who viewed the document, tagged the document, etc.).

Here is how Instant Document Sharing works:

Any documents tagged with a namebecome viewable to that person—only those documents and nothing more. No morephysical media. No more email, FTP, or Dropbox transfers. Tag someone'sname to a document and you're done. They get instant access to documents inwhich they've been tagged, and they'll also receive an e-mail notification witha direct link to view the documents.

The chain of custody is kept intact and more secure than with traditional measures. The danger of accidentallyexposing too many documents to people that should only see a small portion,like expert witnesses, is eliminated. You can learn more here.

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