[LINK] e-discovery Practice Note No 17

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Tom Worthington
> Sent: Wednesday, 18 February 2009 9:55 AM
> To: Link list
> Subject: [LINK] e-discovery for royal commission into the 
> Victorian brushfires
> 
> 
> The Federal Court of Australia finally issued their much delayed 
> Practice Note No 17: "The use of technology in the management of 
> discovery and the conduct of litigation" on 29 January 2009 
> <http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/how/practice_notes_cj17.htm>.
> 

Thanks Tom.
All I can say after reading
http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/how/Practice_Note_No_17_Example%20Advanced%20
DMP.rtf is WOW. Australian legal firms are going to have an interesting
few transitional months.
(And conseqiuentely, lots of opportunities for consultants.......)
Linkers, in the eighties ('83-92ish) I ran a company - Computer Law Corp
(CLC) that delivered doc mgt systems to the legal proffession.
Practice note 17 catapaults Australian e-discovery to the forefront
globally. Makes me almost sad that I didn't write it.

It would appear to me that unfortunately, much of our legal profession
is still in the stone age.

Here is a sample.... (extracted from a Letter from a largish Melb firm -
as a result of a CD full of evidentiary files offered in support of an
expert witness testimony.)
--------------------
We attach a list of the files which we are unable to access or which are
in unintelligible form.
Could you please either:
1. provide hard copy print outs of the files listed on the attached list
in a readable
form; or
2. provide electronic versions of the files listed on the attached list
in an accessible
and readable format.
--------------------
And the files they wanted clarification on ? (Which were electronic
versions)

src
- - appl
- - dummy.c - NOT IN INTELLIGIBLE FORMAT          (reads fine on my
sony)
LampFiles
- Lamp-original.mov - NOT IN INTELLIGIBLE FORMAT  (works fine on my
sony)
Software
- - Apple_Modem_Updater.smi.bin                   (reads fine on my
sony)
- - bus_cif.yuv                                   (views fine on my
sony)
--------------------

NB the firm has an expert witness, highly IT and multi-media trained.
But because they don't have an apple Mac (which they did purchase for
their expert wtness)they elect to nominate that their windows based
machines cant read these files, so could we please print them out. 

Thank God for practice note 17.


Tom