Today, it is rare - and uncommonly lucky - a company that has not had to search its electronic files in response to litigation demands or regulatory inquiries. Law firms that have not engaged in some form of electronic discovery or have not faced a computer forensics issue are rarer still. The truth is, in many cases the documents or activity trail crucial to favorably resolving disputes is found only in electronic records.

This opportunity to discover case-breaking documents - and, from another viewpoint, the procedural mandate to undertake searches for such documents - gives rise to the Electronic Discovery Challenge: how to find useful evidence in a world awash with digital documents. In the United States alone, every hour every day, additional documents equivelent to more than twice the volume of the 17 million books in the Library of Congress are stored on electronic media. An extraordinary efficient team of 150 attorneys and paralegals would need to work for an entire year to review a single hour of national document generation, and that "review" would consist only of flagging certain documents for additional study. Of course, before any such initial review could begin, the documents would need to be secured in a suitable environment.

The legal industry's response to the Electronic Document Challenge has been, appropriately, to rely on computer technicians or forensics specialists to secure electronic data and on sophisticated software to facilitate document search, processing, and production. Some of the necessary expertise has been provided by clients. Law firms have also built in-house electronic evidence shops to host and manage data. Vendors - including Blank Law & Technology P.S. - are available to address special issues and to otherwise fill in the gaps.