Evidence Commons^™

The Increasing Importance Of Metadata In Electronic Discovery, W. Lawrence Wescott Iii

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Metadata, by its nature, is a secondary class of data. Although commonly described as “data about data,” a more formal definition has been given as “evidence, typically stored electronically, that describes the characteristics, origins, usage and validity of other electronic evidence.” The emphasis in the short history of electronic discovery has been on this “other electronic evidence,” such that arguments were made, when drafting the electronic discovery amendments to the federal rules, that metadata should be excluded from discovery.