New Federal Civil Rules of Civil Procedure

Recently we at SuperiorGlacer have been fielding a lot of questions from our clients about the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure scheduled to take effect on December 1st. What our clients are asking is if our electronic discovery process is compliant, and are we ready for the change. The short answer is an emphatic, "Yes."

The longer answer is that we have been compliant for quite some time and will continue to offer our clients a number of solutions that will fit their individual needs. These services include, Forensic Data Collection; Data Culling by date, keywords, custodian, and de-duplication; Native File Production with or without metadata extraction, Native File Production with metadata extraction and formatted text rendering for easier viewing of emails within the database (eliminating the need to open emails separately); Processing to Tiff or other standard encapsulated formats (PDF, HTML etc.) with or without Native File links, or with Native File Links for selected file types such as Excel; and of course hosting all options through our Iceberg hosting services and production of selected documents to Tiff, PDF, HTML etc. or Native Files. All of these processes preserve metadata allowing our client to determine whether to simply produce Native Files with Metadata in-tact or produce Tiffs (or other format) with Metadata in fields in a database.

There seems to be some confusion surrounding two areas of the new rules. One area has to do with preserving metadata. As stated above our process has always preserved the metadata for any file types. We also offer advice to our clients on how to handle their data and collections and we recommend using only certified collections specialists when making a new collection. Our processes and procedures for acquiring data and transferring it to our facilities and server were all designed to ensure the integrity of the metadata. Our clients should be aware that not all service providers are equal, there are a lot of products and companies that are not fully compliant with the rule to maintain metadata and actually alter metadata and document integrity for certain file types. Many are smaller, do it yourself products and companies, but as recent cases have shown us, even larger companies can have trouble. It is important for you, the client, to thoroughly check the credentials of whomever you use. It is also very important to get the experts involved early, before you or your client begins collecting data. This will save time, money and headaches down the road.

The other question we get is "Are you ready to produce Native Files in accordance with Rule 34(b)." The short answer again is, "Yes, and we have been for quite some time." The longer answer is that Rule 34(b) doesn't actually say that Native Files need be produced. What it states is that the default form for producing electronically stored information is that, "in which it is ordinarily maintained [or] reasonably usable." Basically we see Tiff records or other encapsulated format with metadata extracted as "reasonably usable" so we do not think this option will be off the table. The choice is still yours, and since SuperiorGlacier offers a hybrid product that contains, Native Files, Tiffs, Full Text, Metadata and a database, the choice need not be made prior to the review, or need not be final.