Study analyzes e-discovery trends in 2012
Dec 31, 2012

Kroll Ontrack, the technology services division of risk consulting company Kroll Inc., released an analysis earlier this month of all the reported e-discovery decisions in 2012.

Study analyzes e-discovery trends in 2012

By Julie Beck

Kroll Ontrack, the technology services division of risk consulting company Kroll Inc., released an analysis earlier this month of all the reported e-discovery decisions in 2012. It picked out trends from the opinions to determine what the major e-discovery issues were this year.

“Year over year, e-discovery issues evolve at the speed of light, and 2012 was no exception, with significant judicial opinions impacting the electronically stored information landscape,” Michele Lange, Kroll Ontrack’s director of e-discovery thought leadership and industry relations, said in a press release.

Here are some of the key findings from the analysis:

32%: Cases addressing sanctions on various issues, including spoliation and preservation. This is a decrease of 10 percent from 2011.

29%: Cases addressing procedural issues like production, privilege and search protocol. These types of cases nearly doubled this year, compared with 2011.

9%: Cases that discussed technology-assisted review (TAR) or predictive coding. Before the highly-publicized Da Silva Moore v. Publicis Groupe case in February 2012, which approved of the use of TAR, it had never been discussed in a reported opinion. After Da Silva, many other courts took up the issue.