e-Discovery in Canada – There’s still a lot to Learn

Although e-Discovery is quickly becoming a common phrase in litigation and regulatory matters, a couple of recent examples illustrate that knowing the lingo is not always enough.

The first is about an access to information request that was turned down due to the estimated cost to retrieve the information. The producing party claimed that it would cost over three million dollars to extract about 450,000 records from an electronic database, redact personal information, and then print it all out, photocopy it, and had over the hundreds of boxes of paper!

Granted some time (and cost) would have to be incurred redacting personal information. Nevertheless, even the producing party’s information coordinator admitted this is a relatively small undertaking. So what could involve over 40 person-years of time?

The second example is a recent filing by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to dismiss charges in a case because they had too much data. They cited “the enormous volume of discovery” in their submission to the court. Basically, the DEA decided that the cost associated with managing and reviewing about two terabytes of e-discovery records outweighed the chances of a successful prosecution.

While two terabytes is certainly not a small volume of data (it is equivalent to roughly ten million emails), several new technologies, including predictive coding and conceptual clustering, are designed specifically to manage volumes such as this in a cost-effective manner.

​If you are contemplating printing and photocopying electronic information, or are overwhelmed by what appears to be a huge volume of information, call Wortzman Nickle – we can help you save money, and possibly a forest of trees.