Fact Crashing™ Methodology

By Dan Regard

Written by Dan Regard, Founder and CEO at iDS, Fact Crashing™ Methodology covers the 9 Principles of the Fact Crashing™, along with the necessary tools needed to help change the way we litigate. Fact Crashing™ is a portmanteau, a new word made from two pre-existing words. Fact being any digital truth recorded by the systems that permeate our digital lives, and crashing, a construction project management concept used to describe the acceleration of one phase of a project to the benefit of the entire project. In the case of the Fact Crashing™ Methodology, the prioritization of structured data can provide a significant procedural, tactical, and even strategic advantage – including the repeated experience of speeding up dispute resolution by providing both parties with quicker access to mutually agreeable (or mutually obvious) facts. These principles provide the missing tools that will change the way we litigate and summarize decades of experience learning how to identify, qualify, prioritize, and apply structured data to the benefit of resolving disputes, predominately in a legal setting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350932850

Book preview

Title

Copyright © 2023 by Dan Regard

Fact Crashing™ Methodology is a registered trademark of Dan Regard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written consent of the author, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

Published by Dan Regard

Printed in the United States of America.

Book design by brandRUSSO

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

This work would not have happened

without the support of my wife, Liz,

and my home team, Amelia and Felicity.

I would also like to thank the following

for their insight and contributions to the

development of the Fact Crashing™ Methodology:

Hunter McMahon

Jimil Patel

Aaron Crews

Mag. John Facciola (ret’d)

Mag. Andrew Peck (ret’d)

Robert Owen

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PRINCIPLES OF THE FACT CRASHING™ METHODOLOGY

1 – Data Is Evidence and Is Discoverable

2 – Data Should Be Addressed Early

PRINCIPLE 2 – Deep Dive

3 – Frame Case Issues As Data-Centric Inquiries

4 – Identify, Qualify, and Prioritize Data Sources

5 – Data Is Subject to Preservation and Protection Obligations

6 – Data Reliability Starts With Proper Collection

7 – Data Understanding is Required for Proper Analysis

8 – Use Data to Shape Other Discovery

9 – Use Data to Work Toward Early Resolution

CONCLUSION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT iDS

– FACT CRASHING™ METHODOLOGY–

FOREWORD

Twenty years ago, I was fortunate enough to be invited to join the Sedona Conference where I worked with a team of forward-thinking attorneys, judges, and consultants to draft and publish the original Sedona Principles.

These ideas and concepts helped usher in a new generation of litigants to the world of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) and e-discovery.

E-discovery was not new, but it was limited to a few cases and practitioners. With the release of the Sedona Principles, a body of knowledge, list of guidelines, and basis for best practices was disseminated and made available, giving everyone a way to deal with the elephant in the room – the emergence and explosion of e-mail as litigation evidence.

Yet, during those twenty years and for a solid decade prior to that seminal event, I was already working with litigants to deal with a different type of ESI – databases.

Over the years, I have witnessed the increased frequency of databases being relevant to litigation, and an increase in the number of relevant databases per case. Eventually, I started seeing cases, large and small, where the primary evidence considered for merits and damages were databases.

This was very different from e-mail. We refer to those as zero-email cases. Clearly, something was happening. And although it has taken decades to ripen, in the