Litigation & Dispute Resolution

Our work in the area of electronic discovery began in 2002, long before the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure became effective, in 2006. Our team works directly with clients to address records retention issues and to implement tailored approaches to address electronic information. Our team of attorneys and IT support personnel marries the experience of transactional and regulatory lawyers, with corporate governance and document retention knowledge, to litigators and technology support personnel who have substantial experience in the preservation, collection, review and production of electronic information.

Our team members have worked with a variety of consultants on these records retention initiatives and are comfortable working together with them to achieve our clients’ goals. We can act as an advisor on the scope of the project to ensure consistency in process or simply provide legal advice where input is necessary on the projects. Because we work with a variety of consultants and vendors of e-discovery software around the country, we do not have specific alliances, as many of the larger consulting firms do. It is our belief that a review of the options available in the marketplace and how they comport with each client’s technology infrastructure, cost containment objectives and other business goals is crucial to determining which vendors and tools will best meet those needs.

Bill Hamilton, a partner at Quarles & Brady, is the chair of the advisory board of the Association of E-Discovery Certified Specialists. Mr. Hamilton is a featured speaker and writer on business litigation, electronic discovery and evidence. He is also a neutral, arbitrator and mediator for the World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Trademark Association and the American Arbitration Association. Mr. Hamilton currently teaches Electronic Discovery and Digital Evidence as an adjunct professor at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law.

Our team has also been very active in its contributions to the existing body of knowledge about electronic discovery. In response to many of the questions raised by our clients on electronic discovery issues, in December 2007, we launched our own blawg dedicated to providing practical resources for our clients and practitioners in understanding the issues in the field. The blawg can be found at http://ediscovery.quarles.com/. As a result of our online work, our Firm was also recently acknowledged by Bytes and Pieces, an online publication, as one of three firms in the country with a focus upon the emerging e-discovery field.

Firm Resources

E-Discovery Blawg. Since the amendments to the Federal Rules were enacted last December, we’ve received numerous requests from our clients and other friends for information about electronic discovery. This relatively new area of the law has dramatically changed the landscape of electronic document retention and the production of electronic information in litigation. To help you understand and take advantage of this important advancement in legal procedures, Quarles has developed a blawg on issues related to electronic discovery and document retention, called E-Discovery Bytes. You can access E-Discovery Bytes anytime by visiting http://ediscovery.quarles.com/. From case law summaries to electronic document retention guidelines, practice tips and more, E-Discovery Bytes contains a wealth of information that will help keep you up to speed on legal matters in the electronic world. You’ll want to subscribe and visit regularly, as we constantly add new content.

Project Specific Consultants. Having assisted clients in the area of electronic records retention for several years, Quarles has accumulated a wealth of connections and contacts with various consultants who further benefit our clients, no matter where they are located.

Project Management Group. Quarles has established an internal project management group for various technology launch projects, and we are able to utilize our professional team to assist with managing our clients’ scope of projects.

Litigation/Technology Support. Our Litigation Technology team adds key talent to the firm’s human resources, to the great benefit of our clients. A subset of our Client Services Technology Department, five full-time litigation technology specialists — each possessing more than 10 years of industry experience — work together to create and deliver technological solutions, employing state-of-the-art hardware, software and best practices.

Knowledge Management (KM) System. Our KM system uses several approaches to increase the firm’s efficiency and collaboration of workflow among its lawyers and with our clients. The system is designed to organize all information on a client’s matters and publish it in a secure environment for immediate collaboration within the firm and with the client. For complex issues that cross multiple jurisdictions, we have negotiated favorable terms with a premium content provider, to access a multistate survey tool in order to obtain current and reliable information.

Client Service Team. With a client service team, each client benefits from a flexible organizational structure in which each member of the team is committed to understanding your business, staying up to date on trends that affect your business and sharing that information with the full team. Client teams are beneficial to you because they enhance communication and efficiency.

Client Service Assessments. As we have shown throughout the years, we are committed to obtaining regular feedback from you regarding how we are doing, how we can improve and ways to make the relationship the most rewarding for you. To achieve this goal, we will conduct yearly client service assessments to seek information from you and others with whom we work, meet face to face to discuss your observations, and devise a plan to address any issues and move the relationship forward in the most satisfying way.