Sedona Conference WG6 presentation to Article 29 Working Party in Brussels

I do not usually pass on things sent to me without adding some value (or, at least, some comment) of my own. I will make an exception for a report just in from James Daley, co-chair of the Sedona Conference WG6 Working Group, of the WG6 presentation today to the Plenary Session of the Article 29 Working Party in Brussels.

I will interpose only the briefest of introductions for the benefit of those bewildered by the whole subject,  a group which, alarmingly, includes many for whom it all matters very much, if only they knew it.

The Article 29 Working Party is an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy, established under Article 29 of EU Directive 95/46/EC. Its tasks include consideration of the conflicts which arise between EU data protection and privacy laws and the requirements of foreign courts and other bodies for documents which may contain private information covered by the Directive. The Working Party issued a document on 11 February 2009 called Working Document 1/2009 on pre-trial discovery for cross border civil litigation (“WP158”).  The Sedona Conference responded on 30 October 2009 with a formal Comment of The Sedona Conference® Working Group 6 to Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Working Document 1/2009.

Applied Discovery joins the Project’s sponsors

I will do a proper welcome post shortly, and this is just a brief note to welcome Applied Discovery to the ranks of the sponsors of the e-Disclosure Information Project.

I wrote about the company recently (see Applied Discovery gets new marketing wind behind it) and met up with them in London and at LegalTech in New York. Several things are attractive about them, both as players in the market and as sponsors, but if I were to isolate two, they are their commitment to eDiscovery education and their growing strength in Canada – a country which, like the UK (and Australia and Singapore) has been developing the rules for handling electronic documents.

It will be good to have reason to look more closely at what is happening in Canada – the only one of the countries mentioned above which I did not visit in 2009.

As I say, a fuller post will follow about Applied Discovery shortly. It is good to have them aboard.

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Legal Inc case study explains an e-Disclosure project

Statements of functions and benefits and descriptions of litigation support services obviously form the backbone of the marketing material of any company engaged in the handling of electronic documents. It is difficult, however, to convey in the abstract any sense of what is actually involved for the benefit of those who have not been confronted with a case which requires urgent action. What we need are case studies, examples of real life projects which put flesh on the bones, as it were, of the process involved when litigation or a regulatory investigation must be handled promptly.

Legal Inc has done just that with a case study involving its use of Clearwell on a large and urgent project. The article is called  Clearwell and Legal Inc: cutting complex projects down to size.

Deborah Baron summarises the Autonomy Cloud message on video

I am a strong believer in the idea that businesses, and particularly technology businesses, need to make use of every medium which is available to get messages across to potential users. The new media formats such as Twitter, blogs, Facebook and video come at litigation support companies from two directions – they are simultaneously a medium for the distribution of information and a source of potentially discoverable information. Just as it becomes increasingly challenging to keep pace with the volumes to be collected, so it becomes harder to be heard as the means of instant worldwide publication become available to everybody.

That well-worn communications device, the press release, has many advantages. Companies can fine-tune the message, reduce it to the fewest possible words, and distribute it to a mailing list of recipients who will pass it on. Modern technology has multiplied the methods of distribution but the format remains the same as it did in the days when PRs were sent out in the post. The bigger the company, the more likely it is that there is a corporate style for press releases.