Remember when divorcing couples hired private investigators to spy on their soon-to-be ex-spouses? Well, family law is going high tech these days, and one way to protect the family jewels, so to speak, is through data mining.
It sounds a little like digging through someone's garbage and, I suppose, it's like that, only the expert sifts through all the detritus in a person's e-mail, electronic bank accounts, and other info to get information.
The retrieval of e-mail communications and the existence of multiple and previously unknown e-mail accounts has provided unprecedented ammunition for attorneys in recent years. E-mails are often automatically archived and easily retrievable by even the most junior of data retrieval specialists.
Furthermore, they are often very personal and contain information that is relevant to the very heart of the cause of action and ultimate analysis of fault (where fault is a relevant finding).
E-mails often reveal affairs, secret financial dealings, undisclosed partnerships, undisclosed liabilities, hidden assets and, most importantly, the stops through which our data mining road map will be memorialized.
I'm not saying this information isn't helpful in divorce proceedings. I mean, if you are already contemplating divorce, then your relationship has real problems. And certainly, information about your spouse's super-secret bank account is vital when you are talking about dividing up assets. But doesn't this seem sort of, well, creepy to anyone else?
Not if you're into legal technology. Then, it's just all part of the discovery process (and in this case "discovery" is a loaded term).
Data mining should not be viewed as a surreptitious activity because all the information garnered is subject to discoverable review, and any privileged communication or information can be deemed privileged by the attorney or deemed irrelevant to the overall litigation.
This is true. But what, I wonder, happens with those spouses who start divorce proceedings then determine they want to stay together? It seems to me that this is just another tool to speed that divorce along. It's one of the big problems I see with family law in the first place: unlike a contract dispute or criminal proceeding, if there are children involved, these two people will have to work together after the judge's final ruling. I just wonder if knowing there was a suspicious e-mail (even if it lead to nothing) will help in that process.
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