Applied Discovery Fires Back at Law.com EDD Article

Last Friday, I received an e-mail from Miranda Glass at Applied Discovery, attempting to present their side of the story published in the August 10, 2006 online issue of Law.com titled, "Software Glitch May Have Erased E-Mail Text in Enron Suits.", which was also quickly found and distributed by Monica Bay.

Here's the e-mail:

On Friday, August 10th, Law.com published an article that, without some clarification, we believe has the potential to unnecessarily scare anyone who works on electronic discovery matters, regardless of whether using in-house solutions or any outside service provider. In case you were one of those who may have been alarmed by the article, we wanted to share with you the Letter to the Editor Applied Discovery submitted to Law.com in response.

August 11, 2006

Dear Editor: We would like to address a number of factual errors contained in an article published in the August 10, 2006 online issue of Law.com titled, "Software Glitch May Have Erased E-Mail Text in Enron Suits."

This story alleges that "a software bug may have erased text in emails produced for electronic document production being handled by Applied Discovery in the Enron civil suit." In fact, the Microsoft Outlook 2003 bug in question does not erase anything. The bug causes Outlook 2000 emails to appear blank on computers without a patch that Microsoft issued as part of its Office 2003 Service Pack 2 in September 2005. This bug affected what appears to be less than one-tenth of one percent of email documents.

To set the record straight:

1. No data was lost as a result of this bug. It did not erase anything but simply caused the text of emails to not be displayed. The data is present and can be viewed by applying Microsoft's patch to address the error.
   
2. In the Outlook 2000 emails affected by this bug, the To, From, Subject fields and attachments are 100 percent viewable.
   
3. Less than .01 percent of the email documents involved were affected and 99.99 percent of all email materials were correctly identified and fully disclosed in the discovery process. No other materials appear to be affected by this bug.
   
4. Applied Discovery does not use Microsoft Outlook to search email. Rather, Outlook is used to help display emails.

Applied Discovery has been working closely with Microsoft throughout this situation to address the needs and concerns of our clients and maintain the sanctity of our e-Discovery process. Microsoft has expressed confidence that this Outlook issue has been fully resolved. We encourage clients with lingering questions to contact us.

4th Socha Gelbman EDD Report Published

Law Technology News recently published a brief synopsis of the annually anticipated EDD survey findings from George Socha & Thomas Gelbman.

Many of the industry's household names were consistently ranked in the top 5 of various categories, along with some new players. I found it interesting that the market will continue to enjoy double digit growth, but they do forecast a slight decline in growth in the coming years. It was also interesting to note that "do-it-yourself" firms and legal departments accounted for over 90 million.

The survey, and results, in its entirety can be purchases for $5,000. Go here for more details.