E-Discovery in Coach's Case: Prosecutors in a case of alleged sexual assault by a coach against a player are determined to recover six months' worth of email messages believed to be related to the assault. This case will be worth following because of the indeterminate law of electronic discovery. As this law.com article states:

Advances in computer technology have brought a sharp rise in discovery disputes over which electronic data must be disclosed and which are simply too expensive or burdensome for defendants to produce. A rising chorus urging EDD reform has proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Some would curtail a lawyer's ability to read digital jottings over an opponent's shoulder. The battle lines are drawn.

Eventually, I think many electronic documents will be just as discoverable as paper documents, because, after all, many documents only exist now in electronic form. But email? Emails are used far more regularly than telephone calls, meaning they are often informal and voluminous. Thus, it could prove both expensive and overly intrusive to have to turn over email, so it will be interesting to see how the law shakes out, in this and other cases.

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