Electronic discovery (also e-discovery or ediscovery) refers to discovery in legal proceedings such as litigation, government investigations, or Freedom of Information Act requests, where the information sought is in electronic format. This if often referred to as electronically stored information or ESI. E-discovery is subject to rules of civil procedure and agreed-upon processes, often involving review for privilege and relevance before data is turned over to the requesting party. 

Electronic information is considered different from paper information and it is usually accompanied by metadata that is not found in paper documents and that can play an important part as evidence. For example, the date and time a document was written could be useful in a copyright case. The preservation of metadata from electronic documents creates special challenges to prevent spoliation. Oftentimes there are hundreds of thousands of documents that must be reviewed to accurately comply with the subpoena. In order to comply with a subpoena, you must provide all the documents in your possession, not just the documents you can locate. 

The attorney-led team of investigators at Bearden Investigative Agency have performed countless E-discoveries for clients using our proprietary system. If you’ve been served a subpoena, contact an agent today. 1.800.943.2670