See what I did there?  Over in the UK, they call it “eDisclosure” instead of “eDiscovery”.  🙂  Anyway, our ACEDS webinar regarding form of production from last week (which you can view here) was covered by a digital forensics and eDisclosure expert from the UK, where he discussed how the UK handles form of production and how it differs from the US.  The differences are very interesting!

Tristan Jenkinson is digital forensics and eDisclosure expert from the UK.  But, he also has recently started a blog called The eDiscovery Channel, which was founded to discuss “eDiscovery globally, as well as a number of related subjects including digital forensics, data privacy, cryptocurrencies and all sorts of legal technology.”

So far, he has lived up to that, covering a variety of topics ranging from SCOTUS deciding to hear a case that should clarify how the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) should be interpreted, to the Irish Data Protection Commission launching an inquiry into “Google’s processing of location data and transparency surrounding that processing”, to release of a draft version of the Pakistan Personal Data Protection Bill 2020.

His latest post (Potential Drawbacks of Non-Native Disclosure) takes a look at our webinar (see I still managed to get one more shameless plug in for it!), but from a UK perspective with regard to form of production.  As Tristan notes early on: “The standard in the Courts of England and Wales is to produce natively (or near natively where appropriate). Although non-native productions are still in use, they can ring alarm bells unless there is a specific reason for using them.”

Tristan goes on to relay his experience with regard to breaches of disclosure obligations, references a couple of Craig Ball’s posts regarding form of production from earlier this year (as well as the Kamuda v Sterigenics case where Craig testified on behalf of the plaintiffs), UK rules regarding form of production (which are a lot more direct than ours), a discussion of usability of TIFF images, a discussion of extracted text vs. OCR text, thoughts regarding CAD files and comments about the potential falsification of documents with both TIFF and native.

I won’t steal his thunder – check out his post here, which is very informative!

So, what do you think?  Do you know the ins and outs of requesting the form of production in the US and the UK?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.