New E-Discovery Rules Are Coming
By the beginning of next year, Wisconsin will have new rules governing e-discovery. In the Wisconsin Law Journal, Jack Zemlicka writes about the path and content of the new rules. The rules aren’t final yet, and will require some additional tweaking, but they generally follow the outline of the federal rules on the same topic.
E-discovery, much discussed in the past five years or so, hasn’t made as much of a day-to-day impact as was predicted (buth then again, what ever does? remember the swine flu epidemic, the avian flu, the year 2000, etc.?). Nevertheless, in cases where e-discovery is important, it can become one of the central issues in the case, and certainly one of the most expensive components of discovery.
In federal court, many lawyers have taken to using e-discovery as a crowbar to open opponents’ wallets and get a case resolved through financial blackmail rather than through consideration of the substance of the claims and defenses. While I don’t at this time quibble much with the details of the suggested rule, my fervent hope is that Wisconsin courts will police the use of the rule in a way that preserves the facts of the case as the most important part of the dispute.
computer photo courtesy dlisbona’s flickr gallery via this creative commons license
