Link to article by Stephen Whetstone and Michael Simon posted on IndustryWeek, December 7, 2007:
A year ago, the rules that govern litigation in our federal courts were amended to require lawyers and clients to deal head on with electronically stored information (ESI). On December 1, 2006, changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) went into effect. Prior to the amendments, litigants routinely ignored ESI and, operating under a doctrine of “mutually assured destruction,” refrained from seeking it from their adversaries for fear they would be compelled to do the same.
But in the last few years, things changed. Government investigators and plaintiffs’ class action attorneys were not hampered by the same mutuality concerns; they had little to lose and everything to gain by aggressively pursuing ESI. So, Enron, Arthur Anderson, Tyco, Morgan Stanley, and many others were forced to turn over huge amounts of ESI under the glare of the media’s spotlight, spawning more investigations and demands for ESI….