From Sharon Daly of the Irish law firm, Matheson Ormsby Prentice:

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The process of discovery has entirely changed in the last ten years, in an era where electronic documents are now the norm. In addition, the ease with which such documentation can be shared with others irrespective of location has also led to multi jurisdictional issues in discovery becoming increasingly common. In recognition of this, new rules on the discovery of electronically stored information (‘ESI’) (the ‘E-Discovery Rules’), were introduced in Ireland in April 2009. The E-Discovery Rules implement the Law Society’s Litigation Committee recommendations. One of our Litigation partners, Lisa Broderick, was heavily involved in the Committee and the drafting of the recommendations, designed to bring Irish practice into line with e-discovery rules in the US and the UK…

• Scott Zebrak of the RIAA offers his perspective on Viacom v. YouTube.
• I guess the Pentagon no longer thinks social media is such a waste of time.
• “We have a tremendous group of contract attorneys who are extremely vigilant (careful) in spending the city’s money.” Now there is a statement you don’t hear every day concerning contract attorneys. Thank you city of Shreveport.
• Jason Krause writes on “piloting e-discovery rules in the 7th circuit.”
• K&L Gates posts on spoliation.
• LawyerLink is looking for an e-discovery project manager

That was fast.

From WaPo:

Stocks had a late-day turnaround and closed mixed Thursday as traders awaited news that Goldman Sachs settled the government’s civil fraud charges.

As word spread that the Securities and Exchange Commission had scheduled a late-afternoon announcement, investors began buying on the belief that the government and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. had settled the charges that grew out of the sale of securities based on risky mortgages.

The $550 million settlement was announced less than an hour after trading ended. Goldman agreed to pay fines of $300 million, the largest fine against a financial company in SEC history, and $250 million to compensate investors who lost money on the securities. The deal also requires Goldman to review how it sells complex financial mortgage investments…

UPDATE: ProPublica notes the settlement is only about two weeks’ worth of profit for the firm. (Hat Tip: Political Wire)

From ARS Technica:

Surprise, surprise! Google’s purchase of travel services company ITA is almost certain to come under scrutiny by the government, as soon as the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice can decide which body gets to do the dirty work. According to an insider speaking to the New York Times, there are currently discussions going on between the two organizations over which one will investigate, though either one would “dig in pretty aggressively.”

To say we saw this coming would be an understatement. ITA doesn’t just have its own (awesome) website for travel planning, the company’s services power Google competitor Bing’s travel section, as well as numerous other online travel sites such as Kayak, Orbitz, and CheapTickets. In fact, ITA also powers numerous travel agencies and some airline booking systems.

As we pointed out last week, ITA is clearly very important to much of the air travel industry, and competitors are disturbed by the prospect of Google having full control of such a vital industry tool. Enter the FTC or DoJ, either of which is expected to perform a “significant review” of the purchase, according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

ARS Technica: FTC and DoJ mulling who gets to dig into Google’s ITA buyout

Here’s an interesting article on the rise of contract attorneys from Gina Passarella of the Legal Intelligencer. I find it a little funny how one consultant in the states there has been a “huge upswing”  in the contract attorney market. I wonder why that is (sarcasm)?

In an era when cost predictability reigns supreme, corporate law departments are increasingly using project- or contract-based attorneys to help handle an increased workload on a shrunken budget…

Project attorneys are a more viable answer to the budget problem in part because there are so many skilled lawyers out of work due to layoffs at AmLaw 200 firms and the consolidation of legal departments prior to the economic downturn, which led to cuts in those departments as well, [James] LaRosa [of JuriStaff] said…

I was also shocked to read this line.

As law firms see their clients turn to contract attorneys, the firms are too. LaRosa said he is seeing more law firms hiring project-based lawyers in an effort to show their clients that “they get it.”

Really? I thought it was the law firms that started the contract attorney trend, only to be adopted by their clients for cost measures. Good article nonetheless, and I hope like hell Gina is right in reporting that permanent hiring is rebounding as well.

From Bow Tie Law’s Blog:

I always liked John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian views on justice to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, within reason. I propose Utilitarian e-Discovery. All the vendors in the litigation support profession produce many fine products and solutions for large scale e-Discovery services. I have a challenge to everyone in the litigation support profession: Go to your local state courthouse. Spend one hour watching the case management conference calendar. Ask yourself, “Do our products help these attorneys and their clients?” 93% of litigation in the United States is in state courts, not the Federal (CEIC Judicial Panel, 2010). According to the ABA, there were a total of 1,143,358 lawyers in the United States in 2007. There is other data that shows 75-80% of lawyers practice in firms with 20 attorneys or less (estimated 857,519 lawyers with 2007 numbers). My concern for our industry is that products are being developed only for those in the top 7% of litigation in Federal Court.

Bow Tie Law’s Blog: Utilitarian e-Discovery: A Challenge for the Litigation Support Profession

I have been in HELL! Utter Hell! No seriously, I am have been working on other endeavors, but I promise to pick this blog back up.

Anyway, here is my latest post on Above The Law about the Posse List.

For other ATL posts by me, click here.

Love this Quixotic privacy rights campaign cartoon from Monique Altheim of eDiscovery Map.

Sorry I haven’t been updating this blog recently.  I had a few other things I have been working on.  I will be back in fulll force tomorrow.

Here is the “Case in Point” for this week from the good folks over at CaseCentral.

Apparently the DOJ wants to make sure that you can get your Justin Bieber fix somewhere other than iTunes on New Music Tuesday.  Not too much detail out there on this one, but we’re keeping our collective ear to the ground.  There has to be more to this than just exclusivity in debuting new songs, right?

From Engadget:

It’s all just noise right now, but the United States Justice Department is purportedly having a “very preliminary conversation” with Apple regarding the company’s music business, wondering in particular if anything it’s doing (or has done) would violate antitrust legislation. According to unnamed sources familiar with the situation, DoJ staff seem most interested in whether or not Apple’s dominance in the market enabled it to unfairly prevent Amazon’s music service from exclusively debuting new songs.

Engadget – DoJ making preliminary inquiries into Apple’s music endeavors while iTunes dominance continues

This is pretty disturbing to me.  It has the potential to cause serious problems for small and medium sized businesses who can’t afford (and frankly don’t even need) the latest and greatest collection software/hardware.

From e-Discovery 2.0:

Jason Baron was a keynote speaker at a recent electronic discovery summit and he mentioned an electronic data discovery topic that “ought to be blogged about.” So, with that kind of softball I had to take a swing, particularly because it’s been a topic we (at e-discovery 2.0) have been discussing lately.

The genesis of this blog (per Jason) is the recent “skepticism” evidenced by the bench regarding the defensibility of custodian based collections. ARMA has a good piece on this very topic, entitled “Is ‘Manual’ Collection of ESI Defensible?” The core notion is that the tried and true practice of custodian based ESI collection is now under fire by courts, which appear to be looking at this practice with an increasing level of distrust.

“While it is common for companies to use automated data-collection software and hardware, some corporate litigants opt for more informal, “manual” collection methods (i.e., searches performed by individual records custodians) when responding to ESI requests. Companies may choose the manual collection of ESI to reduce costs, particularly if they have limited levels of litigation or lower risk levels posed by the litigation itself.”

e-Discovery 2.0 – Manual Collections of ESI in Electronic Discovery Come Under Fire

Will any one of you admit to owning/having played this game?  It strikes me as so odd that it seems impossible that it could be successful.  To the litigation cave!

From Gizmodo:

The Phoenix Wright franchise deserves a lot of credit for sticking to one of the least appealing-sounding concepts in game history. So anyway, here goes: Phoenix Wright, the comedic litigation game, is in the App Store for $5. Oh dear.

But no, really, Phoenix Wright is a great concept: You play as a defense attorney who, along with a wide cast of characters, investigate and try cases. It’s impressive that Capcom managed to figure out a game mechanism—the point-and-click adventure game, weirdly enough—that can make this concept remotely plausible, and even more impressive that the series, which has actually become somewhat sprawling as of late, is consistently funny.

Gizmodo – Phoenix Wright Comes to the iPhone

• ABA’s 4thAnnual National Institute on E-Discovery is coming up in 4 days.
• Here is a good post from Francois Senecal of Ledjit entitled “Dragging one’s feet on e-discovery: Walking on a thin line.”
• MySpace and Facebook may be in danger of losing a few “friends.”
• Speaking of social media, the Fed Judiciary is now on YouTube?
• Also, Chief Security Officers hate social media, except this one.
• Google’s Street Views should avoid this judge’s house.
• Lastly, Christy Burke writes on how BP has a tidal wave of litigation to worry about, nevermind the fact that they still need to clean up one huge mess.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Matt Lauer. I think he does a great job on the Today Show. However, I woke up this morning in cold sweats with Matt Lauer speculating over whether the market was heading into a “double dip” recession.

I just finished writing on Above The Law about how we were heading into a decade of massive litigation. All of that can stall with the market in a panic.

He then spoke with Jim “Mad Money” Cramer, who seemed to assuage the TV audience that everything would be ok, and that the real crisis would occur in Europe. Of course, this is the same guy that had his credibility up ended by Jon Stewart a while back, but I will choose to believe him now.

I am not saying we bury our heads in the sand at all, but language like “”double-dip recession” only fans flames that really creates unnecessary havoc.

Thankfully, esteemed economist, Paul Krugman has a much more sunny look on the future. Oh, and by sunny I mean, if you enjoy people telling you how stupid you while you are holding a bunch of sleeping pills and a bottle of bourbon. You can check out what he has to say, after the jump.

From Paul Krugman via Politicalwire:

“For the past few months, much commentary on the economy — some of it posing as reporting — has had one central theme: policy makers are doing too much… But the truth is that policy makers aren’t doing too much; they’re doing too little. Recent data don’t suggest that America is heading for a Greece-style collapse of investor confidence. Instead, they suggest that we may be heading for a Japan-style lost decade, trapped in a prolonged era of high unemployment and slow growth.”

Wonderful.  It’s gonna be a great decade!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Happy Friday.

From The Onion:

While millions of young, tech-savvy professionals already use services like Facebook and Twitter to keep in constant touch with friends, a new social networking platform called Foursquare has recently taken the oh, fucking hell, can’t some other desperate news outlet cover this crap instead?”

Foursquare is a little bit of everything—a friend-finder, a local city guide, an interactive mobile game,” said company cofounder Dennis Crowley, as if reading from the same tired script used by every one of these Web 2.0 or whatever-the-fuck-they’re-called startups. “But more than that, Foursquare is an [endless string of meaningless buzzwords we just couldn't bring ourselves to transcribe]…”

Here’s a good article entitled “Where Were You During the Social Media Boom?” by Greg Spizer in The Legal Intelligencer.

Statistics show that social media are booming. Facebook’s website indicates that it has 400 million active users; MySpace’s online press report from earlier this year says it has 100 million active users (this number has been disputed somewhat, but it is still in the millions); and a recent news article in PCWorld said that in January of this year, Twitter had 75 million visitors. Individuals, celebrities, corporations, nonprofit organizations, political campaigns, media outlets, associations, societies, movements, and others are all using social media to communicate, and their messages are being heard.

The social media websites are influencing serious as well as the not-so-serious issues. By example, they are credited with greatly contributing to President Obama’s 2008 victory, as well as with helping 88-year old Betty White to host “Saturday Night Live” after a Facebook group generated more than a half a million followers in support of her appearance. Lawyers must acknowledge social media’s importance.

• On the legal process outsourcing front, Integreon signs a record deal with CMS Cameron McKenna, and Pangea3 opens up an office in London.
• Wendy Akbar blogs about Wisconsin.
• What happens when you mix oil and water? How about a pile of lawsuits and e-discovery issues.
• The EDRM turns six.
• kCura officially loves iDiscover Global.
• Lastly, eigh Jones writes of a new federal program designed to make parties in the pre-trial phase be nice to one another during e-discovery.