Dominic Jaar was recently interviewed regarding an article by The Lawyers Weekly, titled The ins and outs of metadata mining. Metadata mining refers to the techniques used to see the “information behind the information” in electronic documents. Dates of creation, access or last print, authors, number of pages but also hidden text or white text, Track Change information on revisions, comments…

This information is not always useful, but Dominic Jaar clearly states that not looking at them amounts to negligence: “Looking at metadata isn’t just legal: it’s an ethical obligation for lawyers to look at metadata from opposing counsel.” This 20-year old “issue” has yet to get prime-time visibility and it will only come by way of a big case involving metadata. As such, it falls within the competence duty of every lawyer : scrub metadata of documents you are sending to opposing counsel (except evidential documents, of course) and check for metadata in received files.

The article also addresses the (lack of clear) ethical guidelines, in Canada as well as in the United States.

Metadata : not only a funny word !

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