For those who haven’t seen it, the Yale Law Journal Pocket Part contains a 7-part series covering the electronic discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Editor’s Note provides:
On December 1, 2006, electronic discovery amendmentsto the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure go into effect. In thisseven-part series, Judge Lee H. Rosenthal, chair of the JudicialConference’s Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, offers an introductionto the new amendments and describes challenges they present forlawyers, litigants, and judges.
Judge Rosenthal’s introduction follows:
The last time the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended toacknowledge computers was 1970, when the words “data and datacompilations” were added to Rule 34. Thirty-six years later, long afterthe computer has become both ubiquitous and essential, it is time to domuch more. On December 1, amendments will go into effect to make thediscovery rules better able to accommodate the vast changes ininformation technology that have already occurred and that willinevitably continue.
The need for the guidance the e-discovery rule amendments provide is reflected in the fact that courts have been applying the new rules since they were proposed, years before their effective date. Because the amendments have to be flexible enough to apply to allfederal cases that could involve electronic discovery and generalenough to accommodate the inevitable changes in information technology,there are a number of issues the new rules do not address. Instead, therules present procedures and guidelines targeted at the distinctivefeatures of electronically stored information, to help resolve thoseissues when they arise. In this seven-part series, I discuss a fewissues likely to arise under the new rules and the challenges they maypresent, not only for lawyers and litigants, but for judges.
–RR