eDiscovery Daily Blog

Sedona Conference Commentary on Proportionality, Third Edition: eDiscovery Trends

Within the first two months of this blog, way back in 2010, we posted a blog post about the original Commentary on Proportionality in Electronic Discovery from The Sedona Conference® (TSC), which is a project of The Sedona Conference Working Group on Electronic Document Retention & Production (WG1).  Now, the third iteration of the Commentary has just been published.

WG1 commissioned a diverse drafting team in 2015 to study the changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and collaborate on an update to the Commentary that would reflect “the significant and evolving emphasis on proportionality” under the 2015 amendments. The Commentary delineates reasonable guidance on the application of proportionality standards that should enable common sense discovery practices and further the objective of the rules.

The public comment version of this third iteration of the Commentary was published in November 2016. Numerous comments were received by the close of the public comment period on January 31, 2017 and, where appropriate, were incorporated into the final version.

The core of the Commentary are the six Principles of Proportionality intended to provide a framework for the application of the doctrine of proportionality to all aspects of electronic discovery. These common-sense principles are (content in blue is changed since the original version, which we covered here):

  1. The burdens and costs of preservation of potentially relevant information should be weighed against the potential value and uniqueness of the information when determining the appropriate scope of preservation.
  2. Discovery should focus on the needs of the case and generally be obtained from the most convenient, least burdensome, and least expensive sources.
  3. Undue burden, expense, or delay resulting from a party’s action or inaction should be weighed against that party.
  4. The application of proportionality should be based on information rather than speculation.
  5. Nonmonetary factors should be considered when evaluating the burdens and benefits of discovery.
  6. Technologies to reduce cost and burden should be considered in the proportionality analysis.

The amendments to Rules 26(b)(1) and 37(e) in December 2015 were intended to modify how civil litigation is handled going forward. The committee notes made clear the increased emphasis on the role of proportionality in discovery. The practical ramifications of including the proportionality factors in the scope of discovery are evolving and many questions remain concerning how practitioners and judges will adjust. Those questions became the main drivers behind the initiative to revisit, and ultimately publish, the Third Edition of the Commentary.

The prepublication edition of The Sedona Conference Commentary on Proportionality in Electronic Discovery is available for download here.

So, what do you think?  Have you encountered any cases where proportionality of discovery requests are at issue? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine 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 Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

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