The Sedona Conference^® (TSC) and its Working Group 1 on Electronic Document Retention and Production (WG1) have announced that a new edition of the Jumpstart Outline has been published for member and public comment!

What the heck is the Jumpstart Outline, you ask? The Outline was originally developed by Sedona Conference Institute faculty member Ariana J. Tadler in 2008 to provide practitioners with a straightforward and useful set of questions to guide discussions with clients and opposing counsel concerning the preservation, collection, review, and production of electronically stored information (ESI), giving them a “jumpstart” in those discussions.

In 2016, Ariana Tadler, Kevin Brady, and Karin Scholz Jenson updated the Outline to reflect the December 1, 2015, amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, particularly the increased emphasis on proportionality, cooperation, and the reasonable and defensible management of discovery. The 2016 edition of the Outline has become one of The Sedona Conference’s most widely distributed publications.

Because the volume, variety, and complexity of ESI have increased significantly since 2016, a drafting team of experienced litigators and technologists from WG1 has produced an updated edition of the Outline to reflect those developments which include, among other things, potential new sources of relevant information, advances in technology that have transformed how organizations create, store, manage, and retrieve information, and the growing use of AI, particularly generative AI.

This edition of the Outline is intended to help practitioners ask the right questions at the outset of litigation and throughout the discovery process, identify potential issues before they become disputes, and engage in meaningful discussions with clients, opposing counsel, and the courts. The updated Outline also recognizes the increasing importance of understanding how AI and other emerging technologies may affect information governance, preservation, identification, collection, review, and production.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the usefulness of the Jumpstart Outline is found in the Introduction to the Outline:

“[B]eing able to understand the topics and answer the questions identified throughout the Outline should help guide you with respect to the following:

• determining what information is relevant to the claims and defenses and proportional to the needs of the case
• making the efforts necessary to comply with rules governing discovery, supporting constructive discussions between you and in-house counsel, business units, information technology personnel (“IT”), and others who will be involved in satisfying preservation, search, and production obligations
• understanding the systems and other data sources that are likely to be relevant sources of information
• ensuring compliance with preservation obligations in the case.
• crafting a discovery plan
• preparing for negotiations with opposing counsel relating to protective orders and ESI protocols, which are generally negotiated around the same time the Rule 26(f) conference occurs
• understanding the factual basis for claims and defenses in preparation for Rule 26(f) conference discussions with opposing counsel
• preparing for the Rule 16 conference or other court conference concerning discovery obligations
• drafting initial disclosures, issuing and responding to requests for production, defending discovery decisions, and resolving or litigating discovery disputes
• sending appropriate preservation notices to key personnel and IT”

That’s a useful resource! 😊

The 32-page PDF Outline is open for member and public comment through December 11, 2026. You can download a copy of the Jumpstart Outline here. Your comments and questions may be submitted by email to comments@sedonaconference.org. As always, the drafting team will carefully consider all comments received, and determine what edits are appropriate for the final version, due to be published in January 2027.

So, what do you think? Will you check out the Jumpstart Outline? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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