Good article from Erik Sherman in Corporate Counsel on control the amount of data a company has pre-litigation:

The first step is to reduce problems before they start. “If it’s not making you money, and there’s no legal reason to keep it, why not junk it?” asks Daniel Garrie, a managing partner at Seattle legal consulting firm FSRDG. “Legal fees aren’t necessarily rising as much as clients are creating inordinate amount of data that lawyers have to review.”

A law department should create a smart storage strategy with IT. For example, people on an e-mail list might all read the same copy of a file rather than create duplicates that sit in multiple inboxes. Including the legal view can minimize the risk of processing mountains of unnecessary data that can run upward of half the total e-discovery bill, according to Garrie.

Still, foresight does only so much…

From Practical Ediscovery:

Irwin v. Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency, A.T., — N.Y.S.2d —, 2010 WL 462948 (N.Y.A.D. 4 Dept., Feb. 11, 2010)

Petitioner Irwin noticed that a local government agency used a picture of Irwin in an email “news blast.” He claimed the agency used the photo without his permission, and sought modest compensation for the use of the photo. When the agency refused, Irwin sought information about the agency’s collection of digital images under New York’s Freedom of Information Law (“FOIL”).

The request sought “[a]ll computer records that are associated with published [photographs] in all [of the agency's] publications, including [Web site] and e-mail activities, for the years 2005, 2006, and 2007.” The agency produced some photos that were of reduced quality and “bereft” of metadata.

Irwin filed a court action to compel, among other things, the disclosure of the metadata associated with the requested records. The trial court denied Irwin’s petition, and Irwin sought review with the appellate court. On appeal, the court amended the judgment to order the production of the metadata.

The court emphasized that the decision was limited to its facts. But the case is worth reading because of its concise yet thorough explanation of the various types of metadata and their discoverability.

Practical Ediscovery: Court orders disclosure of metadata under New York’s Freedom of Information Law