Law Commons^™

A Student Electronic Discovery Primer: An Essential Companion For Civil Procedure Courses, Jennifer M. Smith, William F. Hamilton

Faculty Books and Book Contributions

A Student Electronic-Discovery Primer supplements the traditional civil procedure textbook. The Primer is specifically designed as a practical and accessible guide for the first-year law student. Traditional civil procedure textbooks have given short shrift to what has emerged as a foundation of modern civil litigation—electronic discovery. This concise text introduces students to the new and often troubling themes of electronic discovery: preservation, search, metadata, and forms of production, touching upon the major issues that confront the use of digital data in litigation. It also includes sample electronic discovery practice forms and outlines the key 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules …

Experience, Not Logic: Adapting Spoliation Doctrine To The Brave New World Of Digital Documents, Roni A. Elias

Student Works

The adversarial system requires full discovery as an essential element of a fair and accurate litigation process. Not surprisingly, spoliation—the destruction of evidence with a culpable state of mind—is an anathema to the most fundamental principles governing litigation procedure and in turn may warrant harsh sanctions.

The doctrines governing how courts respond to spoliation are well established. But these venerable rules were mostly devised for a discovery process that involved the production of paper documents. The information revolution that accompanied the dramatic expansion of computers to produce and store every kind of document forever transformed the discovery process. As computer …

Electronic Discovery And The Constitution: Inaccessible Justice, Jennifer M. Smith

Journal Publications

Computers are the cynosure of American society. As a result, most information is stored electronically and only a small amount of information ever becomes a paper document. This explosion of electronically stored information has affected every aspect of society, including the court system. Litigation is drastically different than a few years ago due to this onset of electronically stored information. The discovery of electronically stored information in litigation has become known as electronic discovery. For many, electronic discovery is expensive and complicated, and thus, litigants are settling frivolous cases to avoid the costs and complexities of engaging in discovery to …