Saturday 23 April 2011

E-Discovery And Litigation Services In India

Electronic discovery plays a major role in pre litigation and litigation phases. For pre litigation phase e-discovery helps in ascertaining the sources and causes of various irregularities and frauds. Once these irregularities and frauds have been detected, the management of an organisation can decide to pursue the same through litigation.

E-discovery and litigation services are also becoming an essential part of legal process outsourcing (LPO) and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) these days. However, it requires good quality of Techno Legal Expertise to perform E-Discovery in a Legally Sustainable Manner, says Praveen Dalal, managing partner of New Delhi based law firm Perry4Law and leading techno legal expert of India. The LPO and KPO Providers of India must be Innovative in order to get maximum benefits out of this upcoming field, says Dalal.

E-discovery is essentially techno legal in nature. The person doing e-discovery must be aware of both technical and legal aspects of e-discovery. This is necessary so that electronic evidence can be acquired in a forensically sound manner. If E-Discovery is not done in a proper manner, it would be “Inadmissible” in a Court of Law, informs Dalal.

E-discovery in India has yet to take a shape. For instance, Perry4Law and Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB) are managing the exclusive techno legal Digital Evidencing and E-Discovery Centre of India. The centre is managing issues like innovative digital evidence LPO and KPO and other techno legal digital evidencing and e-discovery related issues. Perry4Law and PTLB are also the exclusive citizens to government (C2G) LPO and KPO providers in India.

We have to train police officers, lawyer, judges etc with suitable techno legal trainings so that e-discovery and digital evidencing can grow in India. Organisations like Perry4Law and PTLB can play a decisive role in this regard.