The U.S. government estimates 206,000,000 barrels of oil flowed from the explosion of BP's rig into the Gulf of Mexico. Dina Cappiello, "New BP Challenge to Spill Size Could Affect Fine," Associated Press, Dec. 3, 2010, available here. BP has confirmed that the cost of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is $1.6 billion as of December 1, 2010. There are 1 trillion bytes of data in the form of documents, emails, voice mails, text messages, and instant messages expected to be retrieved from BP's electronic discovery. William W. Belt Jr., Electronic Discovery Challenges in BP Oil Spill Cases, The e-Discovery 4-1-1, Aug. 2010. The sheer volume of electronic data will cause the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to become one of the largest electronic discovery events in history.

In the wake of events like an oil spill, natural disaster, or other catastrophic event, clients find themselves confronting urgent duties regarding the maintenance and preservation of electronic evidence, duties that may possibly burden their ability to conduct operations going forward. As litigators, especially as business torts litigators, it is imperative that we provide effective guidance to clients both before and during litigation to ensure that these duties are met and to minimize-to the degree possible-the burden on their business so that a disaster does not become an e-discovery disaster as well.

Download the .PDF to learn more!