As I have mentioned before, the new Recommind blog is a source of useful ideas on the development of eDiscovery practice.

A recent article by Drew Lewis is called You say you want a revolution in eDiscovery? We’d all love to see the plan. Whilst this is self-consciously a US article (its opening quotation is from Jefferson) it has more universal application because of its messages about things like: 

• lawyers who “inexplicably argue that their cases do not involve any electronic information” 

• failures to take the most basic steps to preserve that information 

• lawyers who do not take the trouble to find out what technology exists which may improve the quality and reduce the time and cost of eDiscovery. 

In the US, ignorance of technology is a breach of an express ethical obligation. In the UK and most other common law jurisdictions we do not feel the need to enshrine every obligation in a set of rules, but few could argue with the idea that lawyers ought to know the best and most cost-effective way of achieving their clients objectives whilst keeping the costs down.