Litlock
Solution to the Duties of
Counsel and Clients to Immediately Preserve
Potentially Relevant Electronically Stored Information
Contact: LitLocker@gmail.com
THE PROBLEM: THE LAW REQUIRES PARTIES WHO REASONABLY ANTICIPATE LITIGATION TO TAKE IMMEDIATE STEPS TO PRESERVE ELECTRONICALLY STORED INFORMATION AND PAPER DOCUMENTS
- It is counsel’s duty to advise and guide clients to preserve potentially relevant evidence
- Paper files are simple, but forensically-sound preservation of Electronically Stored Information presents new challenges to lawyers and their clients.
- Courts require that Metadata in Electronically Stored Information be preserved.
- Insufficient preservation effort creates risk to counsel and client of loss of data, inability to authenticate data, or court findings of spoliation of evidence.
- Parties and their counsel are not usually equipped or competent to preserve data and metadata in a forensically-sound manner.
- Even if possible, selecting documents for copying is not safe or advisable.
- Selecting all relevant materials at the earliest stage of dispute is difficult and risky.
- Locating all data required is difficult and time consuming, with high risk of omitting important data.
- Client’s continued use of live data will affect metadata, compromising and complicating later efforts to capture data missed during the first copying efforts.
E-discovery vendors are often expensive
- Clients are resistant to huge investment in expensive data mining, particularly at the beginning of a case.
- Often there is no need to pay for extensive review services at the outset of a dispute.
The Litlock Solution: quick, inexpensive capture of the client’s entire data sets
- An independent service preserves data, without the expense and complications of e-discovery services and review.
- Duties of counsel and parties to preserve electronically stored information are discharged quickly, with minimal expense and trouble.
- Data is available for client and counsel, as needed.
- Counsel can use working copies for review or production, independently or through counsel’s choice of vendor.
- Client can return to using its data normally.
The Litlock Method
- Brief survey to client to identify data locations.
- Counsel and client direct what data sources should be captured.
- Litlocksm technicians go to client’s location with equipment required to capture entire drive contents.
- Only data sources identified and selected by clients and counsel are captured.
- Minimal interruption of client’s business routines.
- Captured data is replicated to two working copies.
- Captured image of client data can be delivered to counsel or client, or can be securely stored using available Litlockersm service.
- Client and counsel have working copy available for searching or production.
- Working copies of data are available for e-discovery services if needed.
- Client and counsel can return to business as usual.
The Litlocker Solution: Inexpensive short or long-term secure storage of the client’s data
- Captured client data is securely stored in vaults with 24/7 security, and access restricted to authorized Litlockersm service providers.
- Upon authorized request, client data is made available for use by counsel or client for court, deposition, expert review or discovery.
- When no longer needed, client data can be returned as a backup, or securely destroyed.