Electronic document retention is a high-stakes field. Faulty retention practices have led to a $29 million verdict resting on a party’s destruction of e-mails1 and to $8.5 million sanctions and bar discipline proceedings for the attorneys involved.2 With devastating sanctions becoming more and more the order of the day, courts have left no doubt that they take retention obligations very seriously in this digital age.

At this critical juncture, the California legislature has finally entered the fray. On June 29, 2009, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law the Electronic Discovery Act (Act). Governor Schwarzenegger’s approval came three years after the federal enactment of a similar set of electronic discovery (e-discovery) rules that updated the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

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