When I was a new trial lawyer, a seasoned veteran joked that the "e" in "e-mail" stood for evidence. It seems to me that after decades of legal advice and collections of company email accounts in litigation, people are finally learning to think before they put damaging admissions in e-mails. That does not mean that there are no "smoking guns" for diligent lawyers to find. The proliferation of alternative means of communication and the rapid rise in the use of varied online methods of communication requires lawyers to look beyond e-mail in discovery. As you consider what documents you need to request in discovery, it is worth investigating where your clients and the opposing parties spend their time online. When drafting discovery requests or collecting documents from your client, don't forget to consider:

• Corporate Chat
  • Slack, Microsoft Teams, What's App and other messaging aps;
• Social Media
  • LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, etc.;
• Text messages
• Call logs/voicemails
• Cloud Accounts
• Visitor Activity, and
• Proprietary Apps.

A lot happens every minute online. People are checking emails, sending text messages, buying something for their home, watching TikTok videos, and much, much more.

And, in the last year, the time we’ve spent online has only increased. In fact, online content consumption has increased by 30% in the last year.

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