We all know that our papers, especially those send electronically (via attached files) may be mined for information, but as this process becomes more common, litigates in particular and every other lawyer in general, are tying to determine how this impacts their case. The miner can gather information about the authors (who drafted which part) as well and what changes were made by each party (so you were the one who changed the numbers on that deal the attached spreadsheet.

Quote:
The partner at Coxe’s firm had sent a brief to a lawyer at another firm who was working on a similar case. Based on the brief, which was sent electronically, the other firm was able to reconstruct every change that had been made to the document, including e-mails between Coxe’s partner and his client — a potential violation of attorney client privilege.

Alarmed by the experience, Coxe urged the board to declare unethical the practice of culling through electronic documents to find hidden data about the history of the document.

Here is a link to the entire article:

http://www.law.com/jsp/ltn/pubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1145538533635

Mike