In my last post of the year, let’s take a look at the 2021 Top Fifteen posts of the year (out of 482(!) total posts) in terms of blog traffic and interest from you, the readers of eDiscovery Today!  This year, I decided to expand a bit to the top 15 posts, once again counted down Casey Kasem style. See if you missed any of them!

Here’s the 2021 Top Fifteen posts:

#15: Court Grants Several Significant Sanctions for Defendants’ Discovery Failures: eDiscovery Case Law – We begin the 2021 Top Fifteen posts list with the first post (of two) from February 9 about the only case law ruling that I’ve ever taken two posts to cover – DR Distribs. v. 21 Century Smoking! Reading the case ruling will take a few hours, or you can read my two posts on it in about ten minutes. You pick.  😉

#14: What “He Said, She Said” About DEI in Legal Tech and eDiscovery: Legal Tech Trends – What a terrific first interview to kick off the podcast I share with Christy Burke (President and Founder of Burke & Company LLC), which I covered on November 1! Our interview – with Candice Corby, President and CEO of Cobra Legal Solutions, Deeanna Fleener, VP of Litigation Services at Integreon and Joy Murao, Founder and CEO of Practice Aligned Resources – was a great way to start! Look for another installment soon!

#13: Random Sample Size Needs to Be One Million Reports, Court Says: eDiscovery Case Law – I covered the Healy v. Milliman, Inc. case on November 30 and it got a lot of attention over the large sample size ordered by the Court. What do you think about it?

#12: Artificial Intelligence as Evidence by Grossman, Cormack and Grimm: AI Best Practices – I only covered this excellent article on the good, bad and ugly of AI from Maura R. Grossman, J.D., Ph.D., Gordon V. Cormack, Ph.D. and Maryland District Judge Paul W. Grimm just two weeks ago on December 8 and it still made the top 15 list, illustrating reader interest in this important topic!

#11: For Newbies, Here Are Some eDiscovery Resources You Need to Know: eDiscovery Best Practices – After several people reached out to me for available resources for newbies to better understand the “ins and outs” of eDiscovery, I provided this list on March 25 as a starting point.

#10: Why You Shouldn’t Send Business Data to Your Personal Email Accounts: Cybersecurity Best Practices – The tenth most viewed post on the 2021 Top Fifteen posts from May 4 was inspired by the Tradeshift, Inc. v. Buyerquest, Inc. case and it illustrates the pitfalls of using your personal email account for anything business related.

#9: Here’s Something Even More Unique Than DNA – Hash Values: eDiscovery Best Practices – This post on August 9 references a terrific article from Forensic Discovery that discusses something even more unique than DNA – hash values – and their usefulness in discovery. Gee, wonder how many views they got?  😉

#8: Planning for Your Case Includes Drafting an ESI Protocol Early: eDiscovery Best Practices – Here’s another post (August 17) referencing another article from Forensic Discovery – this one discusses the elements should be included in an ESI protocol!

#7: Court Denies Motion for Reconsideration Over Production of Hyperlinked Documents: eDiscovery Case Law – This post on March 30 covered perhaps the most controversial case of the year – Nichols, et al. v. Noom Inc., et al. – which introduced to our first case dispute involving “modern attachments” in eDiscovery. Many more disputes to come on this topic, I expect.

#6: Here’s a Terrific eDiscovery Checklist Manifesto You May Not Know About: eDiscovery Best Practices – This post on October 7 covered a terrific resource full of useful checklists authored by Tom O’Connor of Gulf Coast Legal Technology Center (and my “partner in crime” in many webinars), Jeremy Greer of Digital WarRoom and Mike Quartararo of ACEDS. Several of us missed it but found it a year later – better late than never!

#5: “Zoombombing” Just Cost Zoom $85 million: Data Privacy Trends – Apparently, I had you all at “zoombombing” with this post on August 6!

#4: Law Firms May Be Facing an eDiscovery and Tech Personnel Crisis: eDiscovery Trends – This post on October 13 discussed the personnel crisis arising from the “Great Resignation”. Which was a great opportunity to reference a Barbra Streisand song!  🙂

#3: Announcing the 2021 State of the Industry Report!: eDiscovery Trends – Looks like people were really interested in this year’s report, which was announced all the way back on January 5 (you can still get a FREE copy of it if you follow the blog by email). The 2022 report is coming soon, and it promises to be even bigger and better!

#2: Court Gives Plaintiffs No “Slack” in Producing Collaboration App Data: eDiscovery Case Law – See what I did there?  😉  Our top case of the year in terms of blog views was my coverage of Benebone v. Pet Qwerks, et al. on the “ides of March” (aka March 15), where the plaintiff was ordered to produce Slack messages.

#1: Here is Your 2021 Internet Minute Infographic!: eDiscovery Trends – This post on April 16 had almost four times as many views as any other post this year, by far the top post of the 2021 Top Fifteen! And it was one of the easiest to write, as the infographic speaks for itself. Early resolution for 2022 – more infographics!

Once again, I want to thank all of you for reading the blog this year – I really appreciate it!  eDiscovery Today has grown quite a bit this year (285% more views than last year!) and I have you to thank for it!

I also want to thank the partners of eDiscovery Today for all your support!  Without you, there would be no eDiscovery Today!

Educational Partners: HaystackID, IPRO, Prism Litigation Technology, Insight Optix, Compliance, Vound Software, NICE-Nexidia, Cobra Legal Solutions, Forensic Discovery, Sandline, Hanzo, Avansic and Ligl.

Foundational Partners: EDRM and Craig D. Ball, P.C.

Affinity Partners: eDiscovery Assistant and ACEDS.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from eDiscovery Today!

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.