In this article we will investigate e-discovery and its benefits both to businesses and lawyers. Find out why e-discovery is becoming popular over other investigatory methods.
First, what is e-discovery? In the simplest terms it is the process of examining files electronically for legal purposes. In the past when a civil or criminal case was being investigated lawyers would have to spend months examining and organizing company files looking for relevant content. Files that were typically used in these cases were letters, notes and other paper documents in the possession of whoever was being investigated. As more and more information became digitized it was clear that the examination of physical documents would no longer be sufficient. Thus, e-discovery was born.
Next, what are the advantages of electronic discovery for companies? The most obvious pro to using this service is that it tends to be far less time consuming than traditional discovery techniques. Since many lawyers charge by the hour the amount of time spent examining documents meant that the legal costs were very high. Another reason why e-discovery is preferable for companies is because it is more thorough than hard-copy examinations. Before so many important documents went digital it was easy to destroy incriminating evidence. Now, however it is much more difficult to get rid of any trace of something happening. This means that if a company is pursuing a case against one of its employees they don’t have to worry about that employee getting rid of information. Emails, for example, are often stored on more than one account and files that have been deleted on a computer hard-drive can be restored by trained professionals. Short of destroying their computer hard-drive there is very little that a person can do to get rid of evidence against them. Even then with things like cloud computing there is very little that chance that they would be able to get rid of all of the relevant documents.
Lastly, this kind of work is also beneficial for lawyers. In order to perform traditional document review lawyers had to carefully examine each document individually and in great detail and this was very taxing. With electronic discovery lawyers can easily search documents by using certain kinds of software or even just by using basic computer commands.
