How E-Discovery and Digital Forensics Are Transforming Civil Litigation
In recent years, electronic discovery and sophisticated digital forensics have played an increasingly important role in the civil litigation process. Most litigation today, particularly business cases, involves large volumes of electronically stored information. That makes digital acumen essential when it comes to preparing and presenting a case.
E-discovery is the process of identifying, collecting and analyzing electronically stored information (ESI) that is relevant to a legal dispute. It includes Locating potential sources of relevant ESI, ensuring data is protected from alteration or deletion, gathering ESI in a forensically sound manner and delivering ESI in an agreed-upon format to opposing counsel.
ESI may come from any of the followings sources:
- Emails and text messages
- Cloud backups of personal or company records
- Chat logs
- Databases
- Voicemails
- Social media posts and direct messages
- Call logs
- App-use data
- Data from internal company systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM)
- Photos
- Audio files
- Security or surveillance footage
Digital evidence often is highly relevant to the outcome of disputes involving intellectual property, fraud and contractual disputes.
The digital forensic process of reviewing disclosures includes reviewing the contents of files, watching security camera footage and parsing digital data. ESI provided can require hours of professional review to analyze and to ascertain its pertinence to the case. This can be done more efficiently using software tools and advanced analytics (including artificial intelligence and predictive coding).
Digital forensics can uncover deleted files, metadata (timestamps, authorship, edits), user activity logs and communication artifacts (texts, chats, emails). It can also analyze mobile devices and computer activity, trace unauthorized or covert access to files and verify the authenticity of digital evidence that needs to be presented in court.
Working with a legal team that is experienced with civil trials and comfortable with handling vast quantities of digital evidence as part of the discovery process is now key to developing strong trial strategies for obtaining positive outcomes.
The Law Firm of Richard L. Ellison, P.C. in Kerrville, Texas is skilled in e-discovery and digital forensics in all manner of civil disputes. Contact me online or calling 830-955-8168 to schedule a consultation.