eDiscovery in litigation cases means data, data and more data. The end of days of delivering data on CDs and DVDs are fast approaching. For the past 2 years, we have been using portable hard drives to transfer data from one entity to another.
- The clients provide their data to the law firm.
- The litigation support team sends data to the vendors for processing.
- The vendors deliver the processed data to the litigation support team.
- The law firm produces their data to the government agency or opposing counsel.
In late 2005, our Director of Litigation Support Services worked on a Second Request litigation case where she ended up with 70 portable hard drives in her office containing data received from the vendor on a rolling basis. The data on them was then copied onto the server and loaded into Concordance for attorney review in house, at the insistence of the attorneys.
Your litigation support team should have a stock of portable hard drives in their possession. There is nothing worse than having to run out to a store at the last minute to purchase a drive. Lost is the opportunity to get volume discounts or good Internet sales, and what if the store is sold out?
The smaller 3.5 inch portable hard drives are very functional and easy to transport. They are small, lightweight and range in size from 60 to 320 gigabytes. They also have nifty carrying cases available in different colors. At the very least, you should try to stick with the same brand and purchase a variety of disk sizes. The well known brands like Western Digital, Seagate and Lacie are usually a safe bet, although we have all heard stories about “smoking hard drives” and “bad disk drives”.
If the hard drive is used for production, the client can be charged for the hard drive and a new replacement hard drive can be purchased for in-house stock. The hard drives can be recycled over and over again for different sets of data in one case. If the hard drives are used for different cases, a disk wiping software like BC Wipe should be used.
If you have any other tips on using portable hard drives in litigation support, please share with everyone in the comments.