E-Discovery, Big Data
Atlanta partner Alison Grounds was quoted in a July 30 Daily Report article about e-discovery’s evolution over the years – from 2006 when the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures set the first regulations for e-discovery and standards for electronically stored information to changes likely to hit e-discovery practices in the near future. So far, Georgia has rejected any revisions to discovery-related sections of the state Civil Practice Act. In 2014, a bill of proposed changes which was hotly contested and revised to remove some of the original protections in the proposal passed the Georgia House of Representatives but not the Senate.
Alison, who is a litigation partner, the managing director of Troutman Sander’s eMerge subsidiary and a member of the Joint e-Discovery Task Force of the Georgia Bar and Georgia Chamber of Commerce, said that Legislature needs to get back to the task force’s original recommendations in order to pass a bill that keeps eDiscovery proportional to the amount in controversy and reduces burdens on litigants: “The proposed amendments to the federal rules have moved closer to passage and have been modified to strengthen the safe harbor and limits on severe sanctions. A key solution is for Georgia to mirror the latest proposals to the federal rules.”