EDRM Releases Collection Standards

Global News

30
Oct
2013

Editor

Standards provide guidance to attorneys for developing “reasonable” collection strategies

EDRM, the leading standards organization for the e-discovery market, announces the introduction of Collection Standards for electronically stored information (ESI). A draft of the EDRM Collection Standards is available for review and comment on the EDRM website. The public comment period extends through November 15, 2013.

In May 2013 a group of attendees at the EDRM meeting discussed the maturity of the e-discovery industry and how different phases of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model have developed as standards over time – not official standards, but rather what processes are repeatable and have understandable risks and rewards that can be used to evaluate a strategy in various cases.

The group decided that “collection” of ESI had evolved to the point that it made sense to document collection best practices and considerations for developing a collection strategy. The team, including Julie Brown, Teri Christensen, Kevin Clark, Sean d’Albertis, Kevin Esposito, Faisal Habib, Valerie Lloyd, Rick Nalle, Andrea Donovan Napp and John Wilson, has collaborated over the last several months to develop these standards which are now available for public comment.

The team chose to focus on an initial set of topics that includes forensic image, custom content/targeted image, non-forensic copy and exports – harvesting email and non-email records. Each topic includes definitions, pros, cons and a glossary of terms. Topics to be addressed in follow-on efforts include mobile devices, instant messaging, Apple products, international protocols, third-party hosted email and social media or other cloud storage.