Document Production Disputes Exacerbate Access to Justice Challenges in Canada

Director, Review Services and Counsel

August 28, 2023

Civil courts across the country are facing lengthy delays and backlogs. These growing delays increase costs and deny litigants the ability to access timely financial relief and move on with their lives. Indeed, delay is one of three barriers to access to justice specifically noted by Chief Justice Wagner in his 2018 remarks at the 7^th National Pro Bono Conference in Vancouver:

It can take a year or more even to get a date for a trial that might last two months. In the meantime, parties suffer financial losses or family disharmony; physical and mental health issues remain unresolved.… Read More

Heuristica Sponsors Legal Research Award

Heuristica is pleased to announce its sponsorship of an annual award at the University of Calgary Law School for the best legal research paper in the School’s Law 693 undergraduate E-Litigation course.

Heuristica congratulates the School, Dean Ian Holloway and Professor Gideon Christian for their initiative in establishing this important course — a first for a Canadian law school. The course provides students with hands-on training designed to familiarize them with technologies relevant to litigating in a digital environment, including artificial intelligence technologies used in e-discovery document review.

Heuristica, with offices in Toronto and Calgary is Canada’s only national law firm that specializes solely in electronic evidence and complex document review. … Read More

Preservation Obligations may change with new Auto-Expiration of Teams Meeting Recordings

Candice Chan-Glasgow

Director, Review Services and Counsel

February 7, 2022

Parties to anticipated litigation should be mindful of announced changes to the auto-expiration of Teams recordings and their preservation obligations once litigation is reasonably anticipated.

In July 2021, Microsoft announced the initial development of a new auto-expiration feature on Microsoft Teams meeting recordings stored on OneDrive and Sharepoint. On January 31, 2022, Microsoft announced that the default auto-expiration period for Teams recordings will increase to 120 days from the previously announced 60 days.

New recordings will be set to automatically expire 120 days after they are recorded if no action is taken.… Read More

US Case Law Update: Failing to suspend routine document retention process leads to sanctions

December 15, 2021

In a recent case from the United States, the failure to properly implement a legal hold led to a motion for spoliation sanctions.

In Mahboob v. Educ. Credit Mgmt. Corp., Case No.: 15-cv-0628-TWR-AGS (S.D. Cal. Mar. 1, 2021), the plaintiff alleged that the defendant failed to suspend its two-year document retention policy, which resulted in the loss of months of relevant call data and recordings. Countering, the defendant argued that the plaintiff’s motion should be denied due to unreasonable delay.

In the result, the Magistrate Judge granted the plaintiff’s motion for spoliation sanctions, in part. … Read More

To what Extent do Lawyers need to Supervise Document Disclosure?

Vladyslav (Vlad) Strashko

Associate

November 8, 2021

In 2020, several US court decisions dealt with lawyers who failed to properly supervise the discovery process, for example by allowing their clients to “self-collect” records (see Equal Emp’t Opportunity Comm’n v. M1 5100 Corp., Civil No. 19-cv-81320-DIMITROULEAS/MATTHEWMAN (S.D. Fla. Jul. 2, 2020)) or not taking reasonable effort to ensure that the client produced all required documents (see Optronic Techs. v. Ningbo Sunny Elec. Co., Case No. 16-cv-06370-EJD (VKD) (N.D. Cal. Jun. 1, 2020)).

In the first example, the lawyer received a warning from the judge, but escaped sanctions because the discovery process was not yet complete. … Read More