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eDiscovery Playbook®Law & Forensics · Daniel B. Garrie

Resources

The eDiscovery Playbook: the complete guide.

Everything that goes into a defensible eDiscovery process — the definitive, no-gate guide, plus the templates and analysis behind it. Written by the team courts appoint to referee these disputes.

The guide

Six chapters, from the hold to the witness stand.

01

What an eDiscovery playbook is — and isn't

A living operating manual, not a one-time PDF: the who, what, when, and how of defensible discovery, owned and maintained.

02

Legal hold: triggers, issuance, and defensibility

When the duty to preserve attaches, how to issue and track a hold, and how to suspend auto-deletion without gaps.

03

Data mapping the modern enterprise

Finding responsive ESI across M365, Teams, Slack, Google Workspace, mobile, and ephemeral messaging before discovery forces the question.

04

Collection & chain of custody

Forensically sound, reproducible collection that survives a Rule 37(e) challenge and cross-examination.

05

TAR, CAL & AI-assisted review

Choosing and validating a review workflow — and building the metrics record that makes it defensible.

06

ESI protocols under Rules 26(f) & 37(e)

Negotiating protocols courts will enforce — and not signing terms that become the weapon used against you.

Want the whole thing applied to your organization? That's the eDiscovery Playbook® engagement.

Templates

Court-tested starting points.

Drawn from the same methodology behind the playbook. Request any resource and we'll send it over.

Select a resource to request it. Each is drawn from the same court-tested methodology behind the eDiscovery Playbook®.

Insights

Analysis & commentary.

All insights →
Forensic Investigations

Why \"Follow the Money\" Is No Longer Enough: Digital Forensics in White-Collar Fraud

For decades, financial tracing has been the workhorse of fraud litigation. But tracing can show that money moved without proving what people knew or intended — and in modern fraud cases, knowledge and intent live in communications, not ledgers.

Cybersecurity & Compliance

Incident Response and the Amended Reg S-P: New Breach Obligations Reach Smaller Firms

With the June 3, 2026 compliance deadline for amended Reg S-P, smaller registered firms must now implement documented incident response plans and defensible notification processes — no longer optional.

Arbitration & ADR

AI Disputes in Arbitration: How the JAMS AI Rules Streamline eDiscovery in ADR

AI-related disputes generate the kind of evidence — opaque models, evolving training data, sprawling unstructured logs — that traditional discovery handles badly. Arbitration, and the JAMS AI Rules in particular, offer a more workable path.

Generative AI

Generative AI in eDiscovery: Defensibility, Risks, and Best Practices

Generative AI has moved from pilot to production in eDiscovery — classifying, summarizing, and surfacing privilege at a speed manual review cannot match. The capability is real, and so are the risks: defensibility in 2026 depends on the controls you put around the model, not the model itself.

Spoliation & Sanctions

Ephemeral and Mobile Messaging: The New Spoliation Battleground

Auto-deleting chats and the migration of substantive conversation onto phones have made messaging the most contested corner of ESI. Under Rule 37(e), the question is no longer just whether data is gone — it is whether the loss was reasonable, intentional, and prejudicial.

Review Technology

TAR and Predictive Coding in 2026: What Litigators Need to Know

More than a decade after Da Silva Moore blessed predictive coding, technology-assisted review is no longer novel — it is expected. The fights have shifted from whether you can use TAR to how you validate it and what you must disclose.

Engage

Your next lawsuit is already in your data.

The chaos is optional. Build the playbook before the complaint — or bring in the expert courts appoint when discovery goes wrong.