Because You Need to Know: Monthly News Round-Up for January 2018

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, new publications, noteworthy cases, and XDD materials from the preceding month.  This post gathers items of interest from January 2018.

Industry News Stories

Interesting topics in the news from January include the looming effective date of the GDPR, the implications of AI in legal practice, and the evolution of the legal services market:

• The Looming Effective Date of the GDPR
  • It’s a Discovery Exercise: Rethinking Subject Access Requests Under the GDPR
  • How GDPR Will Shake Foundations of Corporate Marketing
  • With Less Than Four Months to Go, Global Companies Still Lack GDPR Plans

• The Implications of AI in Legal Practice
  • How AI is Enabling Law Firms to Adapt to Value-Based Pricing
  • True or False: What to Believe About AI
  • The ‘Complete Change, Soup to Nuts’ That AI Portends for Legal
  • AI Pioneers Have A Big Advantage In eDiscovery

• The Evolution of the Legal Services Market
  • The E-Discovery Market May Not Be Consolidating As Fast As Everyone Thinks
  • As Law Firms Stall, Who Will Overtake Them in the Innovation Race?

Notable Cases

New eDiscovery cases discussed in January include:

• US v. Microsoft Litigation Provides the Supreme Court with a Rare Opportunity to Further Clarify and Define the Role of Comity in International Discovery Disputes
• No Sanctions for Spoliation of ESI Against Plaintiff Leads to Summary Judgment Against Defendant
• Violating a Retention Policy Is Not Necessarily Bad Faith Spoliation
• California High Court Takes Up Criminal Defendant’s Bid for Private Facebook Posts
• Court Orders TAR E-Discovery Software With Validation Set
• Are Defendants Required To Create Datasets to Respond to Discovery Requests in Class Actions?

Useful Publications

New industry publications released in January included:

• The Sedona Conference Data Privacy Primer (Final Version)
• The Sedona Conference Commentary on BYOD (Public Comment Version)
• Gibson Dunn’s “2017 Year-End E-Discovery Update”

XDD Materials

XDD published six new blog articles, one new white paper, and one new educational webinar in January:

• Blog Articles
  • Proportionality Series:
    • Part 5 – Cases from 2017
    • Part 6 – Key Points from the Case Law Survey
    • Part 7 – The Sedona Conference Commentary on Proportionality
    • Part 8 – Five Key Points from the Sedona Conference Commentary
  • Investigations Series (ongoing):
    • Part 1 – When the Game is Afoot
  • News Post:
    • Gibson Dunn’s “2017 Year-End E-Discovery Update” Is Now Available

• White Paper
  • A Supercomputer in Every Pocket: Mobile Devices in eDiscovery – Today, the average smartphone “has more computing power than all of NASA when it put the first men on the moon in 1969,” and the vast majority of litigants’ key players and other custodians will have one in their pocket.  This white paper reviews several aspects of the mobile device discovery challenge, including: what kinds of materials and information they contain; available collection options and applicable limitations; management and review of acquired mobile materials; and relevant case law on the discovery of mobile device data.

• Educational Webinar
  • A Supercomputer in Every Pocket: Mobile Devices in eDiscovery – In this free, one-hour webinar, XDD Director of Education Matthew Verga, JD, discusses several aspects of the mobile device discovery challenge, including: what kinds of materials and information they contain; available collection options and applicable limitations; management and review of acquired mobile materials; and relevant case law on the discovery of mobile device data.

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