Steering e-Discovery's Course

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model Project (EDRMP), launched May 25, will provide “a common language, which eventually should serve as a basis” to develop standards, from specific e-data formats and presentation protocols, and guidelines ' acceptable ways to transfer and present data, says George J. Socha Jr. of Socha Consulting, one of the two consultants who conceived the idea and are coordinating the project.

Socha and his project partner, Tom Gelbmann, an IT expert and principal of Gelbmann & Associates, hope to have by next May a document with:

• A workflow diagram;
• Guidance on records retention, identification and presentation of electronic discovery data; and
• The technologies and techniques involved in e-discovery, along with majority and minority views on the matter.

“At the start, we hope to address records-retention issues, and we may push it all the way back to the point where information is committed to some form of electronic storage, and maybe to the presentation of that information – it might mean at a trial, at a hearing, or at a desposition,” Socha, a lawyer with 13 years of e-discovery experience, says about the project's initial goals.