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Spring 2014, Privacy

 

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E-Discovery: Under the Hood of Your E-Discovery Search Engine

Our experience motoring around the Internet has created a happy sense that searching is so easy, it’s almost hands-free. Of course, driving an effective search requires experience behind the wheel. Google’s simple interface—and the raw horsepower of its search engine—can lull even a novice driver into thinking the cruise control is always on. When it comes to e-discovery however, such pleasant conceits can lead to an unforeseen sharp turn and, at times, a disastrous crash in litigation.

Privilege: The Zone of Confidentiality Expanded

Do you want your communication with a client seeking legal advice to be protected by privilege in discovery? The communication must be confidential when made and be kept confidential thereafter. Does that mean it can be conveyed to no one other than client and attorney? Of course not. Lawyers these days need an army of “others” to provide legal advice to their clients. So let’s say that the communication must remain within a zone of confidentiality.

Privacy: We’re Not Newsworthy

Chief Justice Earl Warren once foretold that “the fantastic advances in the field of electronic communication constitute a greater danger to the privacy of the individual.” Yet, these days, everyone seems to crave public notoriety and celebrity of any sort, don’t they? YouTube is packed to the gills with candid (and not so candid) moments from those just waiting to share their private lives with anyone who happens to pass by their link and click “play.” Reality shows, cooking shows, game shows, daytime talk shows—they are all filled with would-be celebrities clamoring for their 15 minutes of fame. Electronic communications of all types inundate our lives now more than ever and make those moments possible.