Will electronic email discovery loose to social media discovery?

Electronic discovery refers to the process of discovery involving electronically stored information, such as email messages, transaction records, files stored on a disk drive, instant messaging sessions, etc. But now that social media is increasingly being used by businesses, is it possible that social media discovery will overshadow email discovery?

While the takeover of social media discovery may happen sometime in the future, for now, electronic discovery email will remain a top priority for many providers of e-discovery related services. Here are some of the main reasons why:

1. Social media is rarely used to conduct important business transactions

Social media in the business context is often used for informal exchanges, rather than actually setting up the specifics of business related deals. While some cases may involve the discovery of social media posts and messages, the majority of information traded that has relevance to the case will have been done by email or during phone calls.

2. Email is still the preferred method of internal communication in companies

While many coworkers are friends on social media services like Facebook and Twitter, these are mainly used for personal reasons as opposed to communicating detailed information about work related projects. Internal communications, for example messages between an employee and their manager, or communications between different departments in a company are still mostly conducted through email. Therefore, it is quite likely that the demand for email related electronic discovery services will remain quite high even as social media use is becoming nearly universal.

Now there are some cases where electronic discovery would need to be done on social media accounts. For example, someone may launch a personal injury lawsuit against a company claiming that they were seriously injured on their property. But by taking a look at their social media profile, the company's counsel could find evidence that would suggest that the person isn't being truthful in their claim, such as by posting pictures of themselves playing football while claiming that they are too injured to walk properly.

Another time where social media messages could become discoverable is when information that is highly relevant to the case was transmitted through this method. This could be applicable if the client of a certain business made an initial contact with them through social media and during this contact they were provided information that was misleading or false.

But for the time being, email will still have a great importance in the business world. This is why discovery of email information will remain a large part of the work done by e-discovery professionals. Social media, while growing in importance, is not expected to dethrone email discovery for the foreseeable future, unless there is a dramatic change to the way business communications are done.