The first step in dealing with discoverable social media – from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – amongst others – is to remember to think about it at all. Many lawyers who have long grasped the point about collecting email, word documents and spreadsheets, overlook that an ever-increasing amount of communication takes place in what one might call non-traditional media forms.

No one is suggesting that it must all be collected, but it must be considered. It can involve new implications, not least the fact that the data and its vehicle – iPads and smartphones for example – may not be the direct control of the party required to give discovery public disclosure.

Decisions about what to collect, and how much of it to collect, must include some understanding of what is involved in doing so and in reviewing it in due course. FTI Technology is good at this and has come up with a video which explains how social media data can be collected, processed and loaded into Ringtail.