Legal Commentary

Starting with the July issue of Law Technology News, Craig Ball has launched a three-part series explaining e-mail. "Huh?," you might say. "Why do I need to go under-the-hood about something so basic as e-mail?"

Well, because it is "the most sought-after and fought-over electronically stored information" that you will encounter in even the most pedestrian dispute, explains Ball, an Austin, Texas, attorney and forensics master. And it flat out flummoxes litigators.

He begins with a pop quiz. Here are the first three questions:

1. You demanded "all metadata" for each Outlook e-mail message. How many fields of metadata is that?

Where do you look in your copy of a received message to determine if it was bcc'd to someone else?

3. Your Outlook screen indicates that a crucial message sent to you from the same time zone was "received" 10 minutes before it was "created." How is that possible?

Stumped? See "Traffic Jam" for the answers. And watch for the second installment in August!