There are a number of blogs in the US currently commenting on the impact of Vista to electronic discovery. Recent changes in the US to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure around discovery of electronic documents have brought this subject close to the hearts of US attorneys, but the comment is no less significant in the UK.
Metadata is already an issue for businesses, as even outside the scope of litigation, documents which are let loose into the world electronically can contain information not immediately apparent to the naked eye - details of who had edited the document, changes from previous versions, even the originating document that this one is based on.
Microsoft’s new operating system Vista does not change the need for caution in this sphere, but its new security features may cause additional data to be disclosed during a disclosure process. These features will no doubt be a welcome relief for those lawyers busily drafting late at night who suddenly “lose” hours of carefully crafted work when their computer crashes (or they close it without saving!). But by saving numerous versions of the document as “shadow” documents, comments which may not be intended to see the light of day could find themselves basking in the sunlight.
I have yet to see any case where the existence of metadata has made or broken the case (although I’m willing to be proven wrong), and whether this does become an issue remains to be seen. In the meantime, businesses should at least be aware of the information their computer systems are collecting about the work their employees are doing, and consider their information management strategies accordingly.
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