In offering you the agenda of the Third Annual Electronic Discovery Conference at Levin College of Law at the University of Florida, I am not seeking to encourage you to attend – you will have to run, since it takes place today.
The reason it is interesting – and in any jurisdiction – is that its focus is on the non-traditional data sources which one might easily overlook when giving eDiscovery / eDisclosure or seeking it from others.
There is a session about collecting data from Google, iCloud and MS Office 365, one about mobile devices including GPS data, one about Big Data and the Internet of Things and three about social media.
There remains a rather odd assumption that these things only turn up in matrimonial and personal injury disputes. If you look around any organisation, of whatever size (and including law firms), you will quickly observe that a very high proportion of the data created, kept and received comes from or through one of the sources referred to in the agenda. They may not look like “documents”, but they are no less potentially discoverable – I stress “potentially” because I am not urging anyone to rush off and collect data from all these sources or to demand it of opponents. One ought, however, to apply one’s mind to the possibility that the data of this kind may be both discoverable (in the formal sense of the rules) and contain evidence which many affect your view of the case.
Speakers include Martin Audet of Nuix, Ian Campbell of iCONECT, Rene Laurens of kCura, Craig Ball, and others whose names will be familiar to anyone who is involved in eDiscovery / eDisclosure.
Whatever the nature of your disputes, and whichever your jurisdiction, it would be a good idea to keep this agenda to hand as a checklist.
