Emergency Preservation and Limited Forensic Collection Order Entered by Court: EDiscovery Case Law
U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman issued an emergency preservation and limited forensic collection order in Recoop LLC v. Outliers Inc., requiring Recoop to preserve all corporate‑ESI and suspend any auto‑deletion. The order mandates a neutral forensic vendor to conduct a read‑only, targeted acquisition of servers, cloud accounts, and custodial devices, while maintaining a chain‑of‑custody log, hash values, and encryption. A Rule 502(d) clawback provision protects privileged material, and the court retained jurisdiction to impose sanctions for non‑compliance. The ruling clarifies the scope of preservation without deciding ultimate discoverability.
Case Where Plaintiff Tried to Use ChatGPT in a Deposition Is Dismissed: EDiscovery Case Law
In Jones v. Delta Air Lines, the Eastern District of Michigan dismissed a pro se employment‑discrimination case with prejudice after the plaintiff repeatedly failed to meet discovery obligations and attempted to use ChatGPT during her deposition. Judge Susan K. DeClercq...
AI Is Not a Substitute for Good Lawyering, Says Court: EDiscovery Case Law
In White v. Walmart, an Indiana magistrate judge held that artificial intelligence cannot replace the independent judgment of attorneys in discovery disputes. The plaintiff’s counsel relied on an AI‑generated list of alleged deficiencies without conducting its own legal analysis, prompting...
Apple Sends a “Signal” To Law Enforcement: EDiscovery Trends
Apple disclosed and patched a logging flaw that caused iOS devices to retain push‑notification snippets of Signal messages for up to a month, even after the messages disappeared or the app was removed. The retained data allowed the FBI to...
Adversaries You Might Meet Negotiating an AI-Friendly ESI Protocol: Artificial Intelligence Trends
The article identifies a "Willing Collaborator" as a key adversary in negotiations over AI‑friendly ESI protocols. This party is cooperative, curious, and already using generative AI, seeking clear, defensible validation workflows that can be explained to a judge. The piece...
Hallucinations Are Different for eDiscovery Solutions. Here’s Why: EDiscovery Best Practices
The legal community is reacting to recent AI‑generated hallucinations, especially fabricated case citations that appeared in a high‑profile filing. While public large language models can invent facts, eDiscovery solutions operate on a fixed evidence corpus, so their errors are misinterpretations...
Data Poisoning: Yet Another AI Threat: Artificial Intelligence Trends
Data poisoning, once viewed solely as a security attack, is now being adopted by companies as a defensive tool to control how AI models ingest their content. By inserting subtle errors, honeytokens, adversarial perturbations, or structural noise, firms can create...
Five Ways Generative AI Is Reinventing Modern Litigation Workflows: Legal Tech Trends
Everlaw unveiled Deep Dive, a generative‑AI engine that lets attorneys pose natural‑language questions to interrogate entire document repositories. The tool interprets context, surfacing relevant communications and tying them to specific dates, turning weeks‑long keyword‑search projects into hour‑long investigations. The article frames...
Use of AI Does Not Eliminate All Expectations of Privacy, Says Court: EDiscovery Case Law
In Morgan v. V2X, Inc., a Colorado magistrate held that using generative AI does not automatically waive work‑product protections under Federal Rule 26(b)(3). The court affirmed the plaintiff’s right to assert work‑product privilege for AI‑generated materials but ordered him to disclose...
Exterro and eDiscovery Today Announce Educational Partnership to Advance eDiscovery and Data Risk Management Best Practices
Exterro announced an educational partnership with eDiscovery Today, the daily blog for e‑discovery, privacy, and AI trends. The collaboration will produce joint content and initiatives that help organizations manage data across the e‑discovery lifecycle, align legal, compliance and security functions,...
The Machine Isn’t the Interlocutor: EDiscovery Trends
The Sedona Conference Journal released a 20‑page critique of the U.S. v. Heppner decision, arguing that the court mistakenly treated a large‑language model as an independent interlocutor and thereby eroded attorney‑client privilege. The authors, Bridget McCormack and Shlomo Klapper, contend that AI...
A Default Judgment Should Be Entered in the Case, Says Court: EDiscovery Case Law
A Texas magistrate judge recommended a default judgment against Alyssa Trinidad for intentional destruction of electronically stored information in a trademark infringement case. The court found that Trinidad repeatedly deleted messages despite a clear preservation order, constituting intentional spoliation under...
Coercive Sanction Ordered for Non-Party for Failing to Comply with a Subpoena: EDiscovery Case Law
In Guadalupe v. Chase Auto Fin. Corp., U.S. District Judge James M. Wicks held non‑party Sol Enterprise Transport (SET) in civil contempt for ignoring a subpoena duces tecum for employment and payroll records. The judge ordered a coercive sanction of...
Physical Asset Tracking Is an Important Part of Preservation: EDiscovery Best Practices
Physical asset tracking remains a critical component of eDiscovery preservation, even as organizations migrate data to the cloud. S2|DATA’s ChainLogix platform provides a barcode‑based system that assigns up to 200 customizable fields per device, delivering a defensible chain of custody...
Do’s and Don’ts for Attorneys From Two Texas Judges: EDiscovery Best Practices
At the ABA Techshow, Texas Judges Xavier Rodriguez and Roy Ferguson outlined practical eDiscovery guidance for litigators. They urged attorneys to engage opposing counsel early about data production and to use short depositions to expose missing documents before involving the...
The EDRM GenAI Survey Results: AI and eDiscovery Trends
The EDRM GenAI Working Group surveyed 19 senior legal professionals to gauge how generative AI is being applied across the eDiscovery workflow. Respondents, mainly lawyers at large U.S. firms, report strong success with text‑summarization and document‑drafting, while results for full‑scale...
Access to Open AI Tools for Reviewing Discovery Materials Denied by Court: EDiscovery Case Law
The Kansas District Court granted Defendants’ motion to amend a protective order, restricting the use of open‑AI generative tools on any discovery material while permitting closed‑AI solutions that meet security standards. The judge rejected plaintiffs’ claims that the amendment would...
AI and Modernization in Legal and FOIA: EDiscovery Best Practices
Casepoint’s Amit Dungarani recapped a presentation at the 23rd Annual e‑Discovery, Records and Information Management Conference, emphasizing how AI is moving from experimental hype to operational use in legal, FOIA and records environments. He argued that AI deployments must be...
The Blueprint for Construction eDiscovery: EDiscovery Best Practices
Construction eDiscovery faces distinct hurdles because project data lives in specialized platforms like Procore and Primavera, often spread across many custodians and devices. The article outlines how most critical information can be exported as CSV, Excel, XML, or PDF, providing...
The Hidden Cost of “Manual” Legal Hold Processes: EDiscovery Trends
Corporate legal teams still manage legal holds manually using spreadsheets, email threads, and shared folders. These manual workflows create hidden costs, including lost time, reduced visibility, and heightened compliance risk. As matters multiply and data environments grow, the inefficiencies become...
Order Is “Clearly Erroneous” Or “Contrary to Law”, Rules Court in OpenAI Case: EDiscovery Case Law
U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein reversed a November 24, 2025 discovery order that had found OpenAI waived attorney‑client privilege over 2022 communications about deleting two copyrighted datasets, Books1 and Books2. Stein held that OpenAI’s “non‑use” explanation, alleged “moving target” privilege claims,...
Coercive Sanctions Ordered by Court: EDiscovery Case Law
Illinois District Judge David W. Dugan in Mueller v. City of East St. Louis ordered the defendants to produce complete compensation records and conduct a renewed, good‑faith search for electronic communications. The court imposed coercive sanctions of $100 per business...
Provide the Requested Hit Report, Court Rules: EDiscovery Case Law
The Southern District of New York magistrate ordered Sun to produce a hit report for its 57‑term counterproposal after Sun refused, emphasizing the need for transparent term negotiations. The court also compelled Sun to search director Steven Liu’s cellphone, rejecting...
Freedom of Choice with Brian Kelley of CloudNine on the Technocat Podcast: EDiscovery Trends
CloudNine announced an on‑premise version of its CloudNine Review platform slated for a 2026 launch, responding to client demand for cost control, data sovereignty, and workflow autonomy. The move follows the market exit of competing on‑premise eDiscovery tools, positioning CloudNine...
Hallucinations by US Lawyers Aren’t as Bad as You Think: Artificial Intelligence Trends
The article examines the surge of AI‑generated hallucination cases in U.S. courts, noting that out of roughly 982 documented incidents, only 257 are solely attributable to lawyers while pro se litigants account for about 412. It references the Fifth Circuit’s recent...
Four Categories of Documents Requested by Plaintiffs Denied by Court: EDiscovery Case Law
In Yotta Techs. Inc. v. Evolve Bank & Trust, a California magistrate denied all four of Yotta’s motions to compel production of documents. The court rejected Yotta’s request for unredacted personally identifying information, finding the effort disproportionate and untimely. It...
Mastering Ediscovery with This Comprehensive Guide From Everlaw: EDiscovery Best Practices
Everlaw released a 151‑page guide titled “Mastering Ediscovery,” detailing every stage of the eDiscovery process from data preservation to generative AI. The guide breaks down legal hold duties, FRCP Rule 26(f) protocols, predictive coding workflows, and the latest AI‑driven tools for...
A Modern Approach for Modern Data: Context-Aware eDiscovery: EDiscovery Webinars
A webinar hosted by ACEDS will explore how traditional eDiscovery tools lag behind today’s collaborative, cloud‑native data environments. Speakers from Walgreens, Cloudficient, and KLDiscovery will explain a context‑aware approach that leverages behavior, identity, and data lineage to improve custodian identification...
A Case-Driven Approach to Mobile and Cloud Forensics: Forensics Best Practices
The article advocates a case‑driven, tool‑agnostic approach to mobile and cloud forensics, emphasizing that no single platform can address every device type, operating‑system version, or legal requirement. It outlines how forensic tool selection should be based on device characteristics, data...