Normally when I receive my free copy of the California Bar Journal, I skim it but don’t actually read the articles. A piece in this month’s edition, however, caught my eye. In “Beijing, Buenos Aires and Beyond,” Michael Swarz discusses the framework that U.S. courts use for the discoverability of internationally located electronically stored information (ESI). Sometimes the FRCP governs; sometimes the Hague Convention. Swarz discusses the factors that courts must consider, identified by the Supreme Court in Aerospatiale, when deciding which set of rules to apply. In big-time civil litigation in U.S. courts, discovery is the name of the game–and knowing how to get that discovery is paramount. So if you’re a California lawyer who litigates cases involving internationally located ESI, you should probably give this a read. If you take the self-assessment test included in the Journal, you get MCLE credit to boot. Not bad for a free publication.
-NF
