Little Rock , Arkansas , November 12, 2006

http://www.lawofcriminaldefense.com/

Sunday, November 12:
    The ABA's Formal Opinion 06-442 ( August 5, 2006 ) providing ethical guidance on reading metadata in electronic documents provided by one's opponent is now available from the ABA. From the summary:

    The Model Rules of Professional Conduct do not contain any specific prohibition against a lawyer’s reviewing and using embedded information in electronic documents, whether received from opposing counsel, an adverse party, or an agent of an adverse party. A lawyer who is concerned about the possibility of sending, producing, or providing to opposing counsel a document that contains or might contain metadata, or who wishes to take some action to reduce or remove the potentially harmful consequences of its dissemination, may be able to limit the likelihood of its transmission by “scrubbing” metadata from documents or by sending a different version of the document without the embedded information.

    The ABA also issued Formal Opinion 06-443 that same date that holds that opposing counsel against an organization does not have to contact both house and outside counsel under RPC Rule 4.2. Either one may be contacted.

[The American Bar Association publication, Formal Ethics Opinion 06-442 may be purchased at http://www.abanet.org/abastore/index.cfm?section=main&fm=Product.AddToCart&pid=5611100442PDF ]