'Going Native' with E- Discovery Provides Greater Cost Efficiency,
Accuracy for Trial Lawyers, says K&F Consulting’s Greg Fordham

            Alpharetta, Ga. April 25, 2007--  For years most e-discovery has been performed by converting native or original electronic documents into TIFF or PDF documents for trial attorneys to review prior to trial and perhaps even present to the jury.            

"This approach is somewhat akin to showing the jury a picture of a pistol instead of the actual murder weapon," says Greg Fordham, a founder of K&F Consulting Inc., and an expert witness in many state and federal cases involving e-discovery and computer forensics.           

"There are two major drawbacks associated with converting native electronic documents into other formats," Fordham notes. "First, the cost associated with transforming original digital evidence into a different format, and second, the resulting data loss that takes places with the transformation," he said.           

Continuing with his picture analogy, Fordham said the lost data could be compared to not having supporting fingerprints, ballistics, chemical analysis, sales records, ownership, registration and other relevant analyses.           

While Fordham notes that there is some resistance to using native data, the courts are increasingly recognizing its value.            

In Williams v Sprint, 230 F.R.D. 640, (2005) the access to metadata was the essence of the discovery dispute, he said. And he said that the increased efficiency and accuracy of native data was persuasive in compelling its production in United States v Davy, 543 F.2d 996, (1976).
           
In Fordham’s recently published article, “Going Native: How to Get More for Less,” he said the cost to convert native data to another format could be as much as 50 times more expensive than working with the native data itself.  He also notes that numerous software tools are available to view native format files.           

The entire article can be read online at www.knfcon.com/going-native.pdf.           

“In the final analysis ‘going native’ may be the answer for the litigator who thinks that the smoking gun resides in the opposing side’s computerized data, but who has been reluctant to try e-discovery because of cost concerns,” Fordham said. 

About K&F Consulting

K&F Consulting services a nationwide clientele. The firm provides a variety of  
e-discovery and computer forensic services including database forensics, software forensics as well as the more well known forms of computer forensics. The company’s web address is www.knfcon.com.

Editor’s Note for Savannah & Atlanta: Fordham will be in Savannah, Ga., at The Mulberry Inn, 601 East Bay Street on Thursday, April 26, teaching a one day e-discovery for paralegals professional education course. He will teach the same course in Atlanta on Friday, April 27, at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead, 3300 Peachtree Road.

Last year K&F was instrumental in helping the U.S. Justice Department obtain, from a company that manages prescription drug benefits for more than 60 million Americans, $155 million plus interest to settle allegations that the company submitted false claims to the government, solicited and accepted kickbacks from pharmaceutical manufacturers to favor their drugs, and paid kickbacks to health plans to obtain business.

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