Stay Ahead of the Changes to the Annotated ESI Protocol

The latest refresh of the Annotated ESI Protocol underscores how rapidly the eDiscovery landscape continues to evolve, writes Doug Austin of eDiscovery Today. Three years after releasing the original 2023 edition, Craig Ball has published a substantially revised version that reflects the realities of modern evidence sources and the technologies organizations now use to communicate, collaborate, and store information.

The most significant changes center on new categories of electronically stored information. Ball notes that the revised protocol expands to address modern attachments, collaboration platforms, mobile and ephemeral messaging, audio and video content, and foreign-language materials. These additions reflect the growing complexity of digital evidence and the need for discovery protocols that account for cloud-based documents, messaging platforms, and increasingly diverse data sources. 

The refresh also introduces dedicated provisions for collaboration tools such as Slack, Teams, and Google Chat. The protocol calls for native exports, readable transcripts, and separate production of attachments . Similarly, mobile-device collections are now ranked with consumer-grade tools for routine matters in one tier and forensic-grade collections reserved for more serious disputes in another tier.

The revised protocol acknowledges the continued prevalence of traditional production formats yet the scope of native-production carve-outs has expanded considerably. These exceptions now encompass spreadsheets, presentations, databases, photographs, audio and video files, mobile messages, structured data exports, computer-aided design (CAD) files, and other evidence types that do not translate effectively into static page images.

The revised Annotated ESI Protocol reflects an effort to align discovery practices with the realities of contemporary digital evidence while also encouraging broader industry collaboration through ongoing Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) protocol initiatives.