Privacy Protection and Cyber Threats – New Proposals and Strategies to Reduce Risk and Lower E-Discovery Costs

Discovery in civil litigation regularly involves privacy considerations and data security risks. Yet, the word “privacy” appears only once in the FRCP, and it was placed there long before the advent of the modern communication tools that complicate discovery and create litigation privacy risks. By default, the weight of privacy concerns in discovery now falls on defendants, who must sort out the complications or ask judges for ad-hoc protective orders. The absence of integrated rules guidance on privacy and security issues is causing courts to address difficult issues only after they arise, as opposed to proactively at the outset of litigation. To address this absence of guidance, Lawyers for Civil Justice (LCJ) proposes creating a rules structure for courts and parties to consider privacy and cyber security concerns in e-discovery. This panel will look at how these rule proposals address the complicated landscape of privacy regulations and will consider steps to take now to lower litigation data risks and the cost of e-discovery.