Time for another great industry report with another great partner!  This isn’t just ANY eDiscovery Case Law blog post – it is THE eDiscovery Case Law blog post of blog posts!  Today, eDiscovery Assistant and eDiscovery Today announce the release of the 2020 (and first ever) eDiscovery Case Law Year in Review Report!

I’m excited for eDiscovery Today to be participating in this report, which reports on trends involving over 2,800(!) eDiscovery case law opinions in 2020 covered by the definitive source for eDiscovery case law, eDiscovery Assistant (with links to specific cases covered by eDiscovery Today).  🙂

You may think that because of the COVID-19 pandemic and court shutdowns that there was less case law this year than in previous years, but we had more than ever, in fact, over 36% more eDiscovery case law decisions tracked by eDiscovery Assistant than in 2019.  It was a banner year for people who wanted to argue with each other in court!  😉

The 42-page report is divided into several sections, including an Introduction section (which includes a subsection for Examining Key Issues), followed by the most notable issues tracked by eDiscovery Today last year (with links to the actual case decisions via both sites), as well as a Conclusion for 2020, the Issue Tags Cited in the Report and Contact information.

eDiscovery Assistant has over 80 specific issue tags and most cases are associated to multiple issues (you think most lawyers limit their disputes to just one issue?), so it’s worth mentioning that several of the cases in various issue categories in the report could have easily been put into a different category.  Some of the Sanctions cases were also Proportionality cases, and some of those could have easily been categorized as Third-Party Subpoena cases or Technology Assisted Review (TAR) cases (in fact, the most notable case of the year – Lawson v. Spirit Aerosystems – was classified as a TAR case, but it could have easily been added to the Proportionality case list instead).  Don’t get too caught up in the classifications for these cases!

The cases were covered in various ways by both eDiscovery Today, eDiscovery Assistant and the #caseoftheweek blog posts (sponsored by ACEDS), so the report is chock-full with links to various resources to the cases on which you can click for more information.  Here is the legend for the case coverage for this year’s report:

So, how do you get the 42-page eDiscovery Case Law Year in Review report?  If you are currently an email follower of eDiscovery Today, you will be receiving a link to the report in the next few days.  The same is true for subscribers of eDiscovery Assistant – so, you have two ways to receive the report!  Either way, it’s FREE!

If you’re not currently an email follower of eDiscovery Today, you can get a copy of the report simply by following eDiscovery Today via email.  To follow eDiscovery Today, enter your email address at the top of the right sidebar where it says “Follow Blog via Email” to receive the report as well as emails with links to new posts.  It’s that easy – and FREE!  Likewise, new subscribers to eDiscovery Assistant will also receive the report FREE with their subscription.

Thanks to Kelly Twigger, Maribel Rivera and the eDiscovery Assistant team for their hard work on this excellent report and for including eDiscovery Today!  It’s a great report and I’m honored for our 2020 cases to be covered in it!  Hope you enjoy it!

Disclosure: eDiscovery Assistant is an Affinity Partner of eDiscovery Today

So, what do you think?  Are you surprised how many eDiscovery case law decisions there were in 2020?  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.