The Sedona Principles, Third Edition: Best Practices, Recommendations & Principles for Addressing Electronic Document Production
The Sedona Conference · Third edition, October 2017 · 2017
Access and status
Cost
Free
Free to read or download at source. No account, no purchase.
Status
Current
Current as at the verification date below. Standards and tools both move — confirm at source before you rely on it.
What it is
Fourteen consensus principles on producing electronically stored information in civil litigation, with commentary, revised to reflect the 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Courts cite it more often than any other non-binding ediscovery text.
Who it is for, and when
Read it before negotiating an ESI protocol or arguing about scope, form of production, or who bears cost, because opposing counsel and the bench will both be working from it. Examiners should read the principles on form of production and on the responding party's right to choose its own search and review methods, which shape what they will be asked to deliver. It is the standard reference when you need a position that a judge will recognise as mainstream.
What it does not cover
It is consensus guidance, not law, and binds nobody; it addresses civil document production, not criminal discovery or forensic examination technique. The free PDF requires a free Sedona Conference account.
Go to the source
Open at thesedonaconference.org (opens in a new tab)https://thesedonaconference.org/publication/The_Sedona_Principles
Details
- Type
- Standard or guidance
- Written for
- Lawyers and courtsWorking examinerLawyers and courts, Working examiner
- Publisher
- The Sedona Conference
- Version verified
- Third edition, October 2017
- Year
- 2017
- Topics
- ediscovery, preservation, proportionality, evidence-handling, legal-admissibility
- Checked at source
- Standards are revised. Confirm the current revision with the publisher before citing this.
Related entries
A consensus commentary on when mobile device data is within the scope of civil discovery and how to collect and produce it proportionately, covering possession, custody or control over personal devices, targeted versus full extraction, and the form of production for message threads.
A roughly 1,500-page updated treatise covering discovery and admission of electronic evidence against federal and state rules and case law, in eight chapters, with companion Best Practices Guides including an information technology primer for lawyers.
The federal sanctions rule for lost ESI. It applies only where information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it and it cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery, and it reserves the severe measures — adverse inference, dismissal, default — for a finding that the party acted with intent to deprive another party of the information's use.
A consensus commentary on auto-deleting and disappearing-message applications: whether adopting them is defensible, what happens to the preservation duty when a trigger occurs, and how Rule 37(e) applies when messages are gone by design.
A consensus commentary on getting electronically stored information into evidence — authentication, hearsay, best evidence, and the certification routes — rewritten for the second edition to take account of Rules 902(13) and 902(14).