Regardless what you call them, the hyperlinks debate won’t resolve the technical challenges associated with them, as David Greetham of Level Legal says.

In his article on Bloomberg Law (E-Discovery Hyperlinks Debate Won’t Resolve Technical Challenges, available here), David points out that typically, proponents of treating hyperlinked files as modern attachments are plaintiff-oriented requesting parties, and opponents are defense-oriented producing parties. “It’s evidence,” requesting parties claim. “It’s not proportional,” producing parties claim. And so it goes.

No matter which side wins, technical challenges persist, and these challenges often reemerge with each new data source.

So, why is this an issue? As David points out, recently, organizations have begun to move mission-critical systems to cloud platforms. The average number of cloud applications organizations use worldwide grew from eight in 2015 to 130 by 2022! The push to reduce redundant data, combined with centralized storage of data files in the cloud, has created a need to share files within the cloud instead of embedding them within messages.

While that practice has significant information governance benefits—including reduced redundancy of sharing the same file to multiple recipients—it can cause significant e-discovery challenges. One of the biggest is that the file to which the sender linked may have been edited or deleted since it was sent. A copy of the file sent might not be available for discovery purposes.

So, what can we learn from recent case law rulings about the challenges associated with modern attachments? Find out here, it’s only one click! Think of this as a hyperlinked file you’ll want to discover! 😉

So, what do you think? Are you dealing with hyperlinked files in discovery today? Who isn’t? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using GPT-4’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robot confused by a hyperlink in an email”. I’m confused as to why DALL-E can’t spell the word “hyperlink”! 😀

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