Abstract
Response to William Matthewman, Towards a New Paradigm for E-Discovery in Civil Litigation: A Judicial Perspective
We are gradually leaving a quasi-dystopian era of “no-holds-barred” discovery slugfests featuring overreaching, recalcitrance, posturing, and exaggeration. On the future’s horizon, advance parties have made fitful, hesitant, and, at times, successful forays into the rich terrain of electronically stored information. A brighter evidentiary world awaits, yet the courts and counsels seem stymied by obsolete practices that weigh “like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” The more egregious e-discovery abuses have been corralled, but our litigation practice seems stuck far below the pinnacle we can achieve. Judge Matthewman’s welcome article is a guide from the dark cave of a previous era into the bright evidentiary light offered by electronically stored information. Judge Matthewman provides the foundational principles of a new electronic discovery paradigm to help us scale the final cliffs.
Read More.