Recently, a team over at CBS News uncovered a new potential security hole at many corporations – the digital copier.  Essentially, they purchased several copiers used, then managed to “scrape” documents off of each of the copiers hard drives, exposing sensitive documents previously thought to be deleted.  The question then becomes, what needs to happen to a modern printer in the event of a legal hold?

I don’t think that documents that require special software to extract should be produced during discovery.  During the normal course of business, these documents were copied or scanned and should reside in other, more accessible places.  Of course, this all changes if it turns out that a party is acting in bad faith.

I would also not be surprised if, as one result of increased ediscovery productions, companies started looking toward “dumb” technology in order to better serve their needs.  Attorneys still communicate with experts over the phone because electronic correspondence is discoverable in some circumstances.  Similarly, companies might decide that the added features of these new fancy copiers aren’t worth the bother if they’re just creating more headache (and expense) for the legal team.

Related posts:

1. Digital Forensics and the Legal Community Here’s a short audio interview with Rob Fitzgerald of the...
2. Judge Issues Sanctions for Ediscovery Failure Judge Scheindlin, who handed down several important opinions in a...
3. LegalTech New York 2011 Recap It’s a bit late for a LegalTech recap, but better...