Recently, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) announced Version 1.0 of the Primer for Text Message Metadata Project.

We are proud to announce that Monic Harris is a project trustee on the project. Monica Harris is an experienced eDiscovery professional with 15 years of experience specializing in the development, implementation, and training of proprietary software for companies such as KLDiscovery and Consilio. Before joining Cellebrite she worked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration where she oversaw policy and procedure curation, enterprise solution rollout, and training for enterprise for agency litigation and Freedom of Information requests. Monica is an active leader and mentor in the eDiscovery community and currently serves as President of the Association of Certified eDiscovery Specialists (ACEDS) DC Chapter, a Board Member of the Master’s Conference and Committee Chair of the DC Master’s Conference. Monica has served as Assistant Director for the Women in eDiscovery (WiE) DC Chapter and collaborates frequently with DC WiE, the DC Bar, and the Woman’s Bar Association of DC.   

EDRM develops and promotes thought leadership, frameworks, and best practices in e-discovery, with its engaged global community comprised of knowledgeable, multidisciplinary professionals. EDRM contributors continue to enhance e-discovery, privacy, security and information governance frameworks, processes, and standards.

A frequent eDiscovery pain point is the absence of education regarding metadata that is available for text message data that can be found on phones. Today’s newly created hybrid workforce, a by-product of the pandemic, generates a considerable number of communications and many of those communications happen via text message. The lack of text message metadata education can be costly as awareness of text message metadata is key to understanding elements of a text message conversation.  The project will tackle educating legal, litigation technology and corporate investigative professionals on the metadata that is available for text message data found on phones.

“In eDiscovery, the amount of chat data found in review has increased exponentially due to the remote and now often hybrid nature of work that was introduced by the pandemic. While eDiscovery has standardization for the review of documents, those same protocols do not easily lend themselves to the review of chat data that can be found on mobile devices and in cloud-based communication applications,” said Monica Harris, Product Business Manager, Cellebrite Enterprise Solutions and Project Trustee.  “The lack of normalization for reviewing chat data is becoming more urgent as the “smoking gun” of a case may not only be found in email, an Office document, or PDF – it may also be found in SMS, Teams, Slack or similar chat data sources.  The Text Messaging Metadata Primer is the first step in standardizing eDiscovery workflows for data found on mobile devices and in cloud-based communication applications.”

The following people and organizations participating in the project are:  Monica Harris, Cellebrite Enterprise Solutions; David A. Greetham, PCForensics; Nikolai Pozdniakov, Hashtag Legal; Craig Ball, Craig D. Ball, PC; Martha Louks, McDermott, Will & Emery; Frank Perrone, Betsy MorganandHannah Caywood, Relativity; Bilyan Belchev and Brent Dockter from Reveal Data; and Matt Mahon, Trustpoint One.

 

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