Metadata: Technological, Ethical and Legal Consequences
Understanding the Hidden Threat - Best Practices to Manage the Risks
Recording of a 90-minute CLE webinar with Q&A
This CLE course will prepare attorneys to manage the ethical and malpractice risks of metadata. The panel will outline best practices for controlling and managing metadata and meeting related ethical and legal obligations.
Outline
- Day-to-Day Metadata Issues for Lawyers and Others
- Definitions
- Demonstrations of file-system data and embedded data
- Track changes
- Mitigation — scrubbing/cleaning and mining via same software
- Redactions
- Lawyer ethics of inadvertent disclosures day-to-day and in litigation
- E Discovery — exchange of client-created files in native format with metadata intact
- Overview of law
- Demonstrations of frequently arising issues
- Metadata could have been altered and/or otherwise be misleading
- When, up front, you negotiate to exchange in native, be aware of what you are getting into
Benefits
The panel will review these and other key questions:
- What can companies and counsel do to reduce or eliminate the risk of inadvertent disclosures, particularly when using track changes, converting to pdfs or redacting documents?
- What ethical obligations does counsel have upon receipt from opposing counsel of documents that include revealing metadata?
- How are state bars, bar associations and courts treating inadvertent disclosure of metadata?
- What are the key legal and computer-forensics issues that arise in eDiscovery when client-created files are exchanged in native formats?
Following the speaker presentations, you'll have an opportunity to get answers to your specific questions during the interactive Q&A.
Faculty

Robert D. Brownstone
Technology & eDiscovery Counsel
Fenwick & West
Mr. Brownstone advises clients on information-security, data-privacy, electronic discovery, electronic information... | Read More
Mr. Brownstone advises clients on information-security, data-privacy, electronic discovery, electronic information management, retention/destruction policies, workplace technology-use policies and social-media rewards and risks. A nationwide advisor, speaker, writer and adjunct law professor on many law-and-technology issues, he is frequently quoted in the press as a resource on electronic information.
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Kris Haworth
President
The Forensics Group
She has more than 17 years of professional experience in the technology industry. Her cases have established national... | Read More
She has more than 17 years of professional experience in the technology industry. Her cases have established national precedent in the field of electronic investigations and prosecution. She has led numerous large-scale electronic discovery cases as well as computer forensics matters.
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