Women in eDiscovery Elects New Board Members and Reports Continued Growth
Organization provides leadership and networking opportunities for women to grow personally and professionally in the legal industry

PRLog Press Release: Oct 29, 2009 – MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Women in eDiscovery, a non-profit organization that brings together businesswomen interested in technology related to the legal industry, announced today the names of new chapter directors and that it is proudly approaching the 4,000 member mark. The organization held its first meeting with 30 women in attendance in 2007. In a short period of time, Women in eDiscovery has achieved global reach and nearly 4,000 members. The organization provides members with opportunities to help each other grow personally and professionally through leadership, education, networking support, and national recognition.

Women in eDiscovery has 28 chapters across three countries. The organization’s members comprise women from all walks of life, including general counsel, secretaries, law firm partners, associates, chief operating officers, paralegals, litigation support and e-discovery professionals. Many chapters held board elections in October, giving the organization fresh energy into the 2009/2010 term.

National co-founders include Margaret Havinga from a District of Columbia law firm, Shawnna Childress from LECG, and Lana Schell of Clearwell Systems.

Margaret Havinga, co-founder of Women in eDiscovery, said, “Lana, Shawnna and I want to thank all of the newly elected board members for taking on important roles within Women in eDiscovery. We cannot say thank you enough to all of our directors and members for their continued hard work and dedication to this organization. We are thrilled to see everyone’s hard work pay off by being able to increase membership and chapters for the organization as a whole. Without strong, dedicated women, this organization would not thrive as it does.”

For more information on Women in eDiscovery’s free membership and its local and national events, visit www.womeninediscovery.com.

About Women in eDiscovery
Women in eDiscovery (www.womeninediscovery.com) is a national organization bringing together businesswomen around the world interested in technology related to the legal industry. Its goal is to provide opportunities for businesswomen to grow personally and professionally through leadership, education, networking support, and national recognition. There are currently approaching 4,000 members and 28 chapters worldwide.

Contact:
Carolyn Depko
Director of Media Relations

Edge Legal Marketing
732-533-5491
cdepko@EdgeLegalMarketing.com
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Women in eDiscovery is a national organization bringing together businesswomen across the world interested in technology related to the legal industry and provides opportunities to help them and other businesswomen grow personally and professionally.

I received an email this morning offering a free e-book from Search Compliance and thought I would share the wealth!

When properly executed, email retention and records management can prevent potentially debilitating compliance problems - if done wrong, though, it can cost millions. Recently, Philip Morris was fined $2.75 million for continuing to delete emails after a notice of litigation was issued.

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Below is an excerpt from the KMWorld article E-discovery in a Challenging Economy.  Contributing to this piece is eMag's very own Brett Tarr.

Finding The Haystack

Not every company is looking ahead and being prepared. Economic turmoil itself has made planning difficult and has brought on a number of interrelated outcomes with respect to managing data.

"Bankruptcy, mergers and acquisitions, and downsizing all lead to the same basic result," says Brett Tarr, general counsel for eMag Solutions, which provides e-discovery services for litigation, regulation and compliance. "There is a need to find data, but an uncertainty about where it is."

One approach he recommends to prevent confusion is to create a formal data map that shows the physical flow of information through the organization. "In a bank, for example, the CFO might not still be there, but the data map would show whom he communicated with. You can find those people and get 90 percent of what you need." The map should be created as part of normal business operations and updated regularly. The map can save time when e-discovery is carried out, by eliminating the need to search certain devices.

"If the e-discovery is related to an HR case, and all that data is on one server," Tarr explains, "you don’t need to search all the others." Saving only the required and appropriate information is also important. "The organization should develop strategies for setting up retention policies for e-mail archiving and other data, so that the volume is minimized," he adds.

In addition, images should be created of all the devices used by individuals prior to their departure from the organization. "In certain types of bankruptcies related to an individual’s conduct, you might find that a lot of files had been copied from a directory to a portable hard drive, or that information had been deleted," says Tarr. "Once the image is preserved, it can be used for business continuity as well as legal purposes." It’s important, however, to make sure the information is captured so that it is forensically preserved.

To view the full article at KMWorld, click here.

"EDRM Approaches Mid-Year Meeting With New Website and Significant Project Advancements"

"The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) project today announced that it is now easier for users to find the valuable research and standards created by the leading e-discovery industry group via a completely re-designed website, www.edrm.net. In addition, the EDRM leaders, Tom Gelbmann and George Socha, have provided updates to all of the working projects in advance of the mid-year meeting, which [was] held from Oct. 20-21, 2009, in St. Paul, Minn.

Advancements made by the eight EDRM projects in 2009, to date, include the following:

• Evergreen (launched 2007): [Putting] together a Production Pack ‘n Go PowerPoint presentation, which steps through the stages of the production process...[For] presentation and additional Evergreen materials [click here.]
  
• XML (2006): [Developing] XML schema that can be used...as a replacement for the multitude of proprietary load file formats out there today...For XML materials, [click here.]
  
• Metrics (2006): Version 1.0 of the codes scheduled to be released Q4 2009. Draft set can be seen [here.]
• Model Code of Conduct (2007): A draft Model Code of Conduct.
• Search (2008): The EDRM Search Project.
• Data Set (2008): An initial process flow diagram.
• Jobs (2009): A means to identify, assess, advocate for, recruit, on-board and retain the appropriate level of professional resources process.
• Information Management Reference Model (IMRM) (2009): Project seeks to facilitate dialogue among legal, IT, records management, line-of-business and other stakeholders by providing a common language and reference for discussion and decision-making based on the needs of the organization. For more information, [click here.]
  

*The EDRM details above were pulled from a release posted on the EDRM website.  To view the full release and details, please click here.