The Next Generation of Electronic Discovery

Just as general counsel and their outside litigation attorneys are getting familiar with the challenges of electronic discovery, the definition of what is discoverable has begun to broaden. In most of the literature on electronic discovery, the list of places where discoverable information resides is fairly standard and includes computer hard drives, servers, CD-ROMs, floppy disks, zip disks, backup media, e-mail servers, laptops, home computers, and hand-held devices. But, technology keeps changing to meet the visions people have for communicating with each other. As a result, emerging technologies facilitating business communications such as instant messaging (IM), chat rooms, Internet mail, streaming video, spontaneous conferencing, PDA/mobile phone blends, and digital voicemail are quickly becoming the next generation for electronic discovery.