CLE
courses about eDiscovery should be mandatory
Back in the
days of paper discovery, all attorneys knew what a ‘file folder’ was, and they
knew what 'file cabinets’ and 'banker's boxes’ looked like, and how they
worked. All attorneys knew how to open ‘files,’ and knew where they were stored
(they could see them with their eyes). All attorneys also had a pretty good
idea of how many documents and what types of documents were in a file, just by
picking it up in their hands, opening it, and looking at the documents.
Now, with
the advent of ESI and eDiscovery, many attorneys literally do not know where ‘files’ are stored, or what types of ‘files’ there are, or how they can
be stored or retrieved, or how many ‘documents’ might be in any given ‘file’ or
‘file folder’ – and so on.
This is a
genuine crisis, which desperately needs to be addressed. Normally I would be
the last one to suggest more work for attorneys, but it occurs to me that this
problem could be addressed, at least in part, by requiring one or two hours of
MCLE in ESI and eDiscovery for every three-year reporting cycle. That topic could
replace law office management, a previous mandatory category of study which was
deleted years ago.
John
S. Blackman
San
Mateo
California Bar Journal letters must include
full name with a daytime telephone number
and complete address. Send letters to
cbj@calbar.ca.gov.