Originally from Electronic Disclosure in International Arbitration

Metadata; terabytes; forensic images; slack space; e-mail archives. So when did they teach this in law school? For most in-house counsel these are not terms even Webster knew existed when you were in law school. Nor are you likely to use them every day in your legal practice. But for the subset of in-house counsel who have performed so well for their corporations that they have been bestowed the honor of managing the company’s e-discovery activities (apologies to those who willingly assume such duties; I was one myself), these terms get committed to memory very quickly.

There are numerous best practice treatises and articles that outline the case law requirements, the tools that can be utilized and the overall architecture of an e-discovery program. As good as all of these are, as a former in-house practitioner, what seems to be missing is the practical application of all those good principles to a profit-making entity. Because be clear on one thing: the corporation exists for its bottom line. If you are not a law firm, all the legal and risk management theory in the world is not going to matter when you are trying to convince a messaging manager why he or she needs twelve more servers for your discovery efforts. This paper attempts to provide at least some practical guidance on how you might go about developing such a program inside the company firewall, and live to talk about it!

Let us begin with what may be another new concept, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (“EDRM”). It models all the phases in the discovery lifecycle. Each of these phases presents a unique challenge to the in-house practitioner.