David Stanton Shares Tips on What to Look for in an e-Discovery Cloud Provider

David Stanton, a Los Angeles-based partner in Pillsbury’s litigation practice, suggested companies avoid click-through agreements, which are boilerplate, legally binding “contracts of adhesion” that automatically go into force when you click past the fine print. Under such agreements, e-discovery could potentially be cumbersome, expensive, or both, he said. However, “If you're a larger company with a significant amount of data, you can bypass it and call the company.”

Stanton suggested that companies could include contractual stipulations in service-level agreements such as ensuring that e-mail metadata is preserved, specifying copyright ownership of their data, clarifying country locations and cloud-service sub-contracting arrangements, and providing notification of subpoenas.

Stanton cautioned companies to not be fooled by marketing materials. “You'll see marketing materials that say ‘e-discovery compliance' and it doesn't mean anything. They don't know what they're doing,”

Most cloud providers are in the business of getting data in and getting you access to it—and not in getting a lot of data out quickly, Stanton said. There may or may not be a mechanism to extract it. Or if there is a mechanism, it might be an exorbitantly priced add-on, he added.