April 13, 2007 (Mountain View and San Francisco, CA) – Robert Brownstone, Law & Technology Director at Fenwick & West, was recently quoted in an article by AP reporter Anick Jesdanun titled, "Recovering White House e-Mail Not Easy."

Stories about the challenges of eDiscovery started circulating after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont balked at the Bush administration's claims that e-mails related to a senate investigation might have been lost. In response, Senator Leahy quipped "I've got a teenage kid in my neighborhood that can go get 'em for them."

When asked by the AP about Senator Leahy's remark, Robert Brownstone, the Fenwick & West Law & Technology Director said "I would not say that any teenager could do it, but I would say there are many, many highly qualified computer forensics experts," he said. "Whether they will find every deleted message is doubtful but they should find quite a bit."

Brownstone also noted that many organizations retain backups longer than intended because of inertia: They simply don't get around to tossing the copies past their scheduled retention times.

Read the complete article on washingtonpost.com.