Lawyer sanctions in e-discovery cases are on the rise in the US

Electronic discovery held out a great promise: no more towering piles of document boxes, an end to the associate-level purgatory of document reviews, and an efficient way to search out the needle from the haystack. And with all this increased efficiency, you might be forgiven for thinking that electronic discovery might mean less missed deadlines, mistakes, and sanctions for lawyers. According to a new study done by King & Spalding and reported in the Duke Law Journal, however, lawyers are getting sanctioned for electronic-discovery violations at an unprecedented rate. According to the study: ‘Sanction motions and sanction awards for e-discovery violations have been trending ever-upward for the last 10 years and have now reached historic highs’. In 2009 there were seven cases in which attorneys were sanctioned for e-discovery violations, up from five such cases in 2007 and 2008.

Lawyer sanctions in e-discovery cases are on the rise in the US blogs.wsj.com Mon, Jan 17, 2011