I was re-reading the EDRM section on "validation of results" when it hit me. Most of us have been so busy mining the mountain of data that we receive from our opponents in discovery that we have been missing the other mountain of data available to us, the one we didn't ask for. You know the saying: if you don't ask, you won't receive. So I'm talking about the ESI you didn't ask for and didn't get.
I had been reading the last paragraph of the EDRM Search Guide, Section 9.5. You know the one: "Sampling and Quality Control Methodology for Searches."
Sampling. There's a word that most attorneys don't grasp; that is, unless they had a statistics class (and remember some of it) or pay close attention to the results of political polls, when the sample size is usually about 900 to 1,200 randomly selected individuals. Amazingly enough, poll results appear to be good estimates of the vote for whole counties, states, or the entire nation. The size of the sample matters, but the size of the population doesn't. I will spare you the math.
The word "sample" is in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. It was added when the rules were amended to provide for the discovery of electronically stored information. It shows up in the rules governing requests to produce documents: A party may request to inspect, copy, test, or sample electronically stored information. Rule 34(a)(1). In case law preceding the amendment to Rule 34, sampling was used in the context of statistical sampling of backup tapes to see if they contained potentially relevant information. See Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, 217 F.R.D. 309, 324 (S.D.N.Y. 2003).
To Continue Reading: Click Here
-------------------------------------------
Source: law.com
By: Nick Brestoff
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment