PowerPoint Slides about the Seventh Circuit Ediscovery Pilot Program

The Seventh Circuit Electronic Discovery Pilot Program was developed as a result of continuing comments from the business and legal community about the need to reform the civil pretrial discovery process. A committee of trial judges, lawyers, academics and expert consultants met to consider how the cost and burden of electronic discovery can be reduced.

The committee developed a set of ediscovery principles intended to serve as supplemental guidelines to be followed by litigants participating in the program. These principles were codified into a standing order which is being used in selected cases to assess their effectiveness. Kenneth J. Withers, the Director of Judicial Education and Content for The Sedona Conference, and Rebecca L. Kourlis, the Executive Director of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver assisted in the process of drafting these principles.

What makes these principles unique is that they will be tested during phases of the Pilot Program. The results for Phase I of the program will be presented in May 2010 at the Seventh Circuit’s Annual Meeting. They will then be evaluated and refined. Phase II will then run from June 2010 to May 2011. At that juncture, the committee will present its findings and issue its final principles.

Below is to a set of PowerPoint slides addressing the program and the ediscovery principles that are currently being tested.