In This Issue:

Discovery Special Masters Can Streamline the Discovery Process and How to Customize Commercial Arbitration.

Excerpt from Discovery Special Masters Can Streamline the Discovery Process -

The emergence of electronically stored information as the near universal document storage format for business, government and medical providers has made document discovery more complicated and contentious. Using a discovery special master can help a great deal to speed discovery and control its costs. In current discovery, litigants want not only the document itself, but also details about how and when it was produced, who reviewed, edited, or commented on it, and the identity of all who saw it. Today, the phrase “including all metadata” is a staple of ESI discovery and often the source of costly litigation even before the value of the discovery is known to either side. A court appointed special master can materially reduce the cost and time to resolve those issues.

To appreciate the economy of a special master, balance the master’s charges against a litigant’s savings in time and cost to pursue the matter in court. Consider the following...