Successfully Managing eDiscovery: What In-house Counsel Need to Know

We’re pleased to sponsor and present the CBA/CCCA webinar “Successfully Managing eDiscovery: What In-house Counsel Need to Know” on November 22, 2017 from 12:00 to 1:30 ET.

The webinar will provide in-house counsel with an understanding of how to successfully manage eDiscovery in a cost-effective manner.

Topics to be covered include best practices and legal obligations, key functionality to consider in choosing an eDiscovery review platform, defensible eDiscovery processes and innovative review methodologies.

The speakers include:

Crystal O’Donnell, CEO and Senior Counsel, Heuristica Discovery Counsel
Sharon Redding, Senior Specialist, eDiscovery, BCE Inc.
Justin DeMerchant, Contracts Administration Director, SNC-Lavalin

For more information or to register please visit the CBA web site here.… Read More

Heuristica Speaks at Privacy and Data Governance Conference

Crystal O’Donnell, Heuristica’s Chief Executive Officer and Senior Counsel, will speak at the National Privacy and Data Governance Congress in Calgary on April 6, 2017.

Organized by the Privacy and Access Council of Canada (PACC) the 2017 Annual Congress is entitled “A World of Change“. The three-day event running April 5th to 7th provides attendees an opportunity to explore leading issues at the crossroads of privacy, access, security, law and technology and to network with peers and colleagues from industry and government.

Crystal will speak about Balancing Proportionality and Privacy Protection in eDiscovery. For more information about what her session will include please read the abstract.… Read More

Thinking of self-collecting? Don’t forget to consider metadata and cybersecurity.

It is important to take precautions against altering document metadata during collection of data.

Note that metadata will be altered by, for example, collecting the data and then uploading it to a cloud computing service such as Dropbox. Another potential risk with this approach is cybersecurity – consider that 68 million email addresses and passwords were stolen from Dropbox. There may be justifiable economic reasons for an organization to self-collect, however, one must be cognizant of the potential risks.

Iterative Review is More Efficient

A new study confirms what proponents of analytical ‘non-linear’ review or Iterative Legal Analysis & Sampling (ILAS) have been saying for some time: that it is more accurate and cheaper than traditional ‘linear’ review.

The study was authored by Anne Kershaw, an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and a practicing e-discovery lawyer. Kershaw had two teams conduct a review of the same set of documents using the same review platform. One team of three contract lawyers followed a traditional ‘eyes on all documents’ approach, while the other team consisted of a single senior lawyer and a technology manager using an ILAS approach.… Read More

E-Discovery and Professional Ethics

There is no doubt that electronic evidence has had an increasing impact on legal services, and the knowledge required to effectively deal with evolving technology.

In Ontario, this also has an impact on a lawyer’s duty to clients to perform legal services to the standard of a competent lawyer. In Ontario, under the Law Society of Ontario’s Rules of Professional Conduct, ‘standard of a competent lawyer’[1] entails, among other things, recognizing limitations in one’s ability to handle a matter or some aspect of it, and adapting to changing professional requirements, standards, techniques, and practices.

Although the Rules of Professional Conduct do not explicitly mention electronic discovery, counsel should nonetheless ensure that their client receives adequate legal advice about electronic discovery.… Read More