Susan Knox explores the role played by electronically stored information in contemporary legal practice
Now more than ever, organisations document and store a significant amount of information in electronic form, whether typed into an e-mail message, word processing document or spreadsheet, electronically generated in a database, or recorded as a digital photograph, sound recording or a video image. And increasingly often, the resulting electronic files remain electronic only, never taking form on traditional media such as paper or film.
The implications for legal practice are many. Because of the relative ease with which information can be recorded and documentation generated, the volume of potentially relevant documentation relating to any given matter can be great. At the same time, there are more and more places, some truly tiny, in which evidence may be stored, and significant amounts of data may be retained for much longer periods of time. Individuals are also commonly able to remove substantial amounts of data from an organisation's premises or systems, whether for nefarious purposes or inadvertently, with minimal difficulty.
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