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Letters to the Editor

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

 

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