Lawyer Time
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Lawyer Time
In the US and work for a corporation, get ready to spend some time with lawyers. Last Friday new rules went into effect regarding data access, retention, and disclosure. These are codified in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which govern how proceedings in federal courts are handled. With this being a complicated topics and lawmakers in the various states not interested in making more work of this than they need, similar or the same rules will likely be adopted by various states. I have no idea how things will go overseas, but I'm sure they'll have (or maybe have) something similar.
One of the changes mean that lawyers must disclose storage systems, processes, and deletion guidelines. Since the lawyers will need to do this if you are sued in a US federal court, you'll either need to brief litigators or go to the proceedings yourself. Oh joy! After a few months of working on and off with an attorney on the sale of SSC, I've had my fill of lawyers for the decade.
And I liked our lawyer. I just hated the process.
One other thing is the cost of discovering the data needs to be known. As stated in the example, it doesn't make sense for a company to spend $2M to retrieve data if the lawsuit is for $150,000. So many of you will probably get a lesson in how much it costs for something to occur. Your time, the time for the tape admins, lost work cost, etc. It's all funny money and many of us argue over whether these are really "costs" to the company, but rest assured, your lawyers will want to count them.
However one of the most interesting things I saw in the article was the rules for formatting. Should you produce an Excel XLS to show something? It's a mutable format and data can be changed. Presumably each side would have a copy, so somehow what was submitted to the court could be "certified". If you send a PDF of the spreadsheet instead, then none of the formulas or code is visible. It's the same with databases. If you show a result set of a table, the constraints, triggers, etc. aren't readily apparent.
It's enough to make my head spin and I can easily see why things in the legal world take so long. I just don't enjoy the whole idea of it. There is one thing I'm fairly certain of if any of you are involved with a lawsuit concerning your databases:
You'll be heading to court to explain things.
Steve Jones
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There is some money to be made here in building a discovery and documentation application that worms its way through your enterprise and discovers relevant information, categorizes it, and stores it away for indepth analysis of what information is where. Think if the $2M spent to retrieve data could be congealed to using this new $50K application + $25K of analysis to fight the $150K lawsuit. Then it becomes more tempting to fight the application.
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SET SARCASM_MODE ON
What do you call 500 lawyers at the bootom of the sea ?
SET SARCASM_MODE OFF
I just forwarded the article to the CIO ... he needed something to start his Monday off right !
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
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Steve - you are an amazing writer. Keep up the good work. We all love you.
-mL
Thank You,
Matthew Lyon, Ph.D. Candidate
University of California, Riverside
Department of Botany and Plant Sciences
Laboratory of Mikeal Roose, Citrus Genomics
lab (951) 827-4736
apt (951) 328-9930
mob (951) 941-5554
http://www.mattlyon.com/aim+msn: ptrifoliata student email: mlyon003@student.ucr.edu
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We submit all our data via the Mikeysoft Papersoft Data Products.
Paper and #2 pencil.
Additions and subtractions or modifications are readily identifiable
Resultant conclusions are based on same verifiable data.
Data retrieval is a copy machine.
Data dispersion is by fax (leaving a trail)
Frustration to lawyers is priceless.
But, they bill you for reading later...
There are no winners when dealing with lawyers
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what do you call a bunch of lawyers on a crashing airplane?
Thank You,
Matthew Lyon, Ph.D. Candidate
University of California, Riverside
Department of Botany and Plant Sciences
Laboratory of Mikeal Roose, Citrus Genomics
lab (951) 827-4736
apt (951) 328-9930
mob (951) 941-5554
http://www.mattlyon.com/aim+msn: ptrifoliata student email: mlyon003@student.ucr.edu
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Seriously guys, can we get the answers to these?
1 -
What do you call 500 lawyers at the bootom of the sea ?
2 -
what do you call a bunch of lawyers on a crashing airplane?
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Q. What do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the sea ?
A. A good start !
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
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1. A good start
2. Not sure of this one but I heard that there were 2 empty seats. What a shame.
Why won't sharks attack lawyers?
Professional courtesy.
What's the difference between a dead dog and dead lawyer lying in the road?
There are skid marks in front of the dog.
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Q. Why do they bury lawyers 20 feet underground?
A. Because deep down, they really are good people.
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Q: What do you call a lawyer gone bad?
A: Your honor.
Q: What do you call a judge gone bad?
A: Senator.
Q: What's wrong with lawyer jokes?
A: Lawyers don't think they're funny, and nobody else thinks they're jokes.
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Bob,
that made my night.
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Truly there is no system so messed up that Congress can't make it worse
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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Quite simply, the primary job of the federal government is to take something simple and complicate it !
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
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