Technology Media and Telecom

New Jersey's long-arm jurisdiction over Internet disputes just got a little longer. A New Jersey state appeals court ruled in July that a California resident accused of making libelous statements in a Web-based forum can be sued in New Jersey because the material was 'targeted' toward a New Jersey audience.

Frequently missing from the plethora of articles on the pitfalls and potential problems in electronic discovery data for the uninitiated or unaware is practical experience and analysis from the trenches. This article addresses key EDD issues and pitfalls in a particular case involving 44 million pages of electronic records and a jury verdict of about $570 million, with a focus on the consequences of retaining too much electronic information and ways to solve problems that plague large companies involved in e-discovery.

Matters related to intellectual property ('IP') have become so common in our e-discovery and computer-forensics practice that when we tell our staff there's a new matter requiring our attention, the general response is typically: 'Let me guess ' another company where a former employee has left for a competitor or created a startup, and allegedly stole the company's key intellectual property to get a head start.' From that point, we delve into another adventure to hunt down the next smoking gun and, in some instances, the silver bullet.

The author believes that the best e-discovery-review best practices should be characterized as the application of real-life lessons. He believes they are not complicated, and that focusing on a few of these learned lessons with a thoughtful, deliberate approach will achieve a truly effective electronic discovery review.

Recent cases in e-commerce law and in the e-commerce industry.

e-Commerce and tech firms face constant threats to secrecy and challenges unheard of by their real-world predecessors. Today, for example, businesses that work with data about individuals, whether that data is a record of credit-card transactions or is housed in more complex medical databases, must comply with complex burdens to maintain the confidentiality of the people to whom the data pertains. As the many recent headlines about privacy breaches reveal, protecting against the risk ' and cost ' of worldwide criminals' vigilance to gain instant access to that data must be as much a part of any e-commerce firm's business plan as its marketing strategy.

With a vendor partner now in place to help remove the headaches associated with managing a review database, you should have it made it the shade. Hold on! You're certainly on the right track, but the job doesn't end once the vendor is chosen. There are still a number of technical items that need to be considered about this review environment before you can turn your entire review team loose on the data. An engineering assessment of the review environment itself will go a long way in helping identify potential problems and risks early on as well as becoming the first step toward a successful overall review. Following is a short checklist that can aid in this assessment process.

Law firms must produce documents ranging in difficulty from simple memos to complex agreements, as well as disclosure documents and briefs. Firms are often under the highest pressure with demands for both accuracy and turnaround. As a result, it is imperative that they produce well-formatted documents quickly and efficiently.