We’ve blogged about professional multilingual legal translator services in the process of cross-border discovery. Traditionally, discovery of records has always involved the transmitting of papers and documents, carefully passed down a clearly laid out legal chain of custody. However, times have changed and the world continues to go ‘paperless’ – meaning that much of the traditional information sought after in the discovery process is now electronic. In response, the legal world is slowly shifting to an electronic discovery.
By definition, electronic evidence is any “information stored electronically that meets the relevancy requirements for discovery in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure”. Because electronic information can be stored more easily, companies, governments and others are now storing more information – meaning discovery has become that much more complex. Typical problems for litigators include exponential growth, difficulty with the inherent ambiguity of human language (particularly when foreign language and foreign language translations are thrown into the mix of electronic documents) and the overall inefficiency of trying to manually review all of this information.
To help expedite this sometimes daunting task, some law firms have utilized the basics of search engines and using keyword searching for electronic discovery. However, this too has many complications and potential areas for legal liability.
Contact our legal interpretation and translation firm to retain competent human translators, licensed bilingual attorneys and JDs for on-site ediscovery document review and translations from any foreign language into English.