Governor Schwarzenegger Signs California's Electronic Discovery Act, to be Effective Immediately

News broke today that California Governor Schwarzenegger signed the state’s Electronic Discovery Act, to be effective immediately. We have two perspectives on this development. The first comes from TERIS CTO Peter Sternkopf:

California, as well as other states, have adopted the FRCP’s at the state level – this has set a tremendously positive precedent for our industry.

California’s adoption of the FRCP’s forces all levels of Litigation Practice (law firms and corporations alike) to follow guidelines that ultimately make Litigation Service Providers interaction with Clients and their business run much smoother. Finally the resistant and less adept Clients are forced to follow the same guidelines as the rest of us.

We expect the adoption of the FRCP’s top propagate and positively affect more areas in the EDRM. A super positive consequence of this proliferation is the widespread focus and adoption of more industry standard practices.

The second comes from Micah Kasdan, San Diego Regional Director of Electronic Sales (RDES)  who earlier wrote and blogged about this topic:

After more than 3 years of speculation and 2 rounds of review from Governor Schwarzenegger, California has amended the State’s rules for civil procedure regarding the handling of Electronically Stored Information (ESI).

TERIS has spent the better part of the past 5 years consulting and educating clients on the impact of data on the discovery process. This part of our industry remains a very interesting area of constant transition. We are looking forward to bringing our previous experiences of assisting clients with the 2006 FRCP rule changes to help this new wave of attorneys deal with a major shift to their processes. These changes largely mirror those that have taken effect in the federal court system and we expect many of the same growing pains to follow on the State level. For more details about the new codes, please check this link: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_0001-0050/ab_5_bill_20090629_chaptered.pdf. And for assistance on handling ESI with industry leading best practices, contact your TERIS representative.