Because You Need to Know: Monthly News Round-Up for January 2019

A monthly round-up of industry news stories, useful publications, and notable cases of which you should be aware from the preceding month

Welcome to “Because You Need to Know,” XDD’s monthly news round-up.  In these posts, we gather together interesting articles, noteworthy cases, new publications, and XDD materials from the preceding month.  This post gathers items of interest from January 2019.

Industry News Stories

Interesting topics in the news from January include a new ABA report, source proliferation, biometric device access, and GDPR impacts:

• A New ABA Report
  • ABA Report: E-Discovery Requests Are Up Among Law Firms

• Source Proliferation
  • Why the Explosion of Communications Channels Is a Compliance Problem
  • Mobile Devices Become Important Resource as Texts, Chats Replace Emails

• Biometric Device Access
  • Face ID, Touch ID unlocks can’t be compelled by law enforcement, rules federal judge
  • A California Judge May Have Changed the Conversation Around Biometrics Privacy Rights

• GDPR Impacts
  • Google’s GDPR Fine Is a Warning for Tech GCs: Double Check Data Consent Policies
  • Facebook Messaging Merger Could Face GDPR Complications, Irish Commission Warns
  • European Commission Statistics Show Number of GDPR Complaints Rising
  • Collaboration Is Crucial to Cross-Border Investigations in a GDPR World

Notable Cases

New eDiscovery cases discussed in January include:

• New York’s Appellate Division Continues Trend On Discoverability of Social Media
• Defendant’s failure to produce discovery ‘no one’s fault but its own’
• Judge Suggests That “Bone-Crushing” Discovery is Needed to Explore Extent of Facebook Breach
• Court Declines to Order Plaintiff to Produce Cell Phone in Employment Discrimination Case
• Native-Format Production — Lessons From McDonnel Group, LLC v. Starr Surplus Lines Insurance Co.

XDD Materials

XDD published five new blog articles, one new practice guide, and one new educational webinar in January:

• Blog Articles
  • Processing Fundamentals Series:
    • Part 1 – Why Understanding Processing is Important
    • Part 2 – Key Activities and Common Tools
    • Part 3 – Common Exceptions and Special Cases
    • Part 4 – Objective Culling Options
    • Part 5 – Some Final Steps and Key Takeaways

• Practice Guide
  • Pop Quiz: How Do You Test a Search? Using Sampling to Test Classifiers – Despite years of discussion in the eDiscovery industry about the power and importance of sampling techniques, many practitioners remain unfamiliar with what they can accomplish with them and when – outside of TAR – they might do so. Testing classifiers is an application of sampling that can be used to replace guesses about searches with measurements of them.  In addition to iteratively improving searches, it can be used to enhance discovery process negotiations, and to measure human document review.  In this free, twelve-page Practice Guide, XDD Director of Education Matthew Verga, JD, covers topics including: informal vs. formal sampling, calculating recall and precision, and figuring out your margins.

• Educational Webinar
  • Sampling to Improve eDiscovery Searches, Estimates, and More – Despite years of discussion in the eDiscovery industry about the power and importance of sampling techniques, many practitioners remain unfamiliar with what they can accomplish with them and when – outside of TAR – they might do so.  In fact, two of sampling’s most valuable eDiscovery applications exist outside of TAR: estimating prevalence and testing classifiers.  Properly estimating prevalence can tell you much about your data and your efforts, including what to prioritize, how to proceed, and how well you’ve done.  Properly testing classifiers can facilitate the iterative refinement of searches, persuasive negotiation about searches, and more.  In this free, one-hour webinar, XDD Director of Education Matthew Verga, JD, provides an introduction to these sampling applications and walks the audience through step-by-step examples of their use.

As always, we welcome your input regarding future topics for our webinars, articles, and white papers.  Share your interests with us here.