This week’s post for IPRO’s blog addresses how chain of custody tracking of the evidence associated with electronic discovery has evolved significantly in recent years.

Sometimes, I like to take a topic I’ve written about before and revisit it to discuss how the topic has changed and evolved over time and chain of custody is one of those topics.

eDiscovery workflows used to be highly manual and require data processing operators to move data through each step of the discovery process, which required a form for chain of custody tracking.  You collected data, then copied it in a place where your eDiscovery processing software could proceed to process it, then once it was processed, you loaded it into your eDiscovery review platform to support document review.

Once potentially responsive documents were identified for production, you might have then loaded those back in the processing platform, which also served as a production platform.  Because of the manual steps involved, the chain of custody form was important to capture information at each step such as the date and time of data transmission, parties involved and description of the data itself to help demonstrate a defensible process for managing the data.

But it’s not like that anymore, in most cases.  How is it different?  Why is chain of custody tracking so important and what can go wrong if it’s not handled properly?  And why is a picture of Ryan Braun on this post (and not Yogi Berra, for once)?  You can find out on IPRO’s blog here. 😉  It’s just one more click!

So, what do you think?  How do you handle chain of custody tracking of evidence today?  Is that process as efficient as you’d like it to be?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclosure: IPRO is an Educational Partner and sponsor of eDiscovery Today

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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.