Want to know what FRCP Rule 37(e) means for modern collaboration platforms? Brandon D’Agostino of Cloudficient discusses that here!

As discussed in his post titled (wait for it!) What FRCP Rule 37(e) Means for Modern Collaboration Platforms (available here), Brandon discusses that Rule 37(e) requires “reasonable steps” to preserve electronically stored information (ESI). So, when evidence lives in Teams, Slack, and SharePoint, what does “reasonable” actually require?

As he notes: “The same preservation steps that were reasonable for email-era evidence can be structurally incomplete for collaborative evidence. They execute correctly. They preserve real data. And they may silently miss the evidence that matters.”

Continuing, he says: “In my view, that standard was designed for a world where evidence was primarily email and files. The question now is what it means when the evidence lives on collaboration platforms.”

In a terrific article with a lot of great points, this perspective really resonated with me:

“Rule 37(e) does not require perfection. It requires reasonableness. But reasonableness is not static. What was reasonable in 2015, when the rule was adopted, reflected the evidence landscape of that era. The evidence landscape has changed.” Couldn’t agree more.

So, what changed with the advent of collaboration platforms? What can we learn from the case law? And what does reconstruction-grade preservation address? Find out here, it’s only one click! Clicking requires no collaboration! 😉

So, what do you think? Do you have an opinion on what FRCP Rule 37(e) means for modern collaboration platforms? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using DALL-E 3, using the term “robot lawyer wearing a suit consulting a book titled ‘Federal Rules’ in a law office”.

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