Law.com Quotes Shook Partner on EU’s Digital Markets Act

The recent approval of the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act will provide additional privacy rights to European Union citizens while increasing the risk and complexity of preserving, collecting and reviewing custodians’ data from the EU. 

In “EU’s Digital Markets Act Could Spark E-Discovery Headaches—And Possible Innovation,” Law.com interviewed Shook Co-Chair of the Data & Discovery Strategies Practice Group Patrick Oot on the future challenges and possibilities for e-discovery efforts with the implementation of the Act.

“I think from the start we are not going to see much of a change from the discovery world because of the current framework for the multiple tools you have to … collect separately,” Oot said. “It will be interesting to see, as content bleeds over to the various platforms, how collection and extraction for discovery purposes will occur. I think that will be the big challenge going forward.”

Oot noted that he sees the increased need created by the Digital Markets Act for interoperability of these platforms, encouraging new and better e-discovery software to simplify some tasks, such as the collection of ephemeral messages from an environment that controls user access to network-based content and services.  

“I think the DMA, how it would work at least from a gatekeeper’s platform, would allow for discovery tools to collect the information for discovery purposes from walled gardens,” Oot said.

Oot is the editor-in-chief of The General Counsel’s Guide to Government Investigations (4th Edition) and The Electronic Discovery Institute’s Guide to Spoliation (5th Edition) as well as serving as the long-standing chair of ALM’s advisory board for Legalweek, an annual gathering of thousands of legal professionals to explore business and regulatory trends and technology and talent drivers influencing the legal industry.