Emojis & eDiscovery: What Lawyers Need to Know
Today, building a case based on the review of emails and other electronic communications has become commonplace, and most review teams have gotten comfortable with the process. Newer sources of information including text messages, instant messaging and even social media feeds are now starting to emerge on the eDiscovery scene, and these come with many new challenges. Collection, processing and review often require new tools and new workflows, but many vendors have some form of solution for these. The bigger challenge is the language and characters used. Emojis, on the other hand, are a whole other minefield.
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1Key takeaways from the white paper.
The origins of the emoji. What is an emoji?
Emojis and electronic discovery
The legal emoji translation challenge
Emojis & eDiscovery: What Lawyers Need to Know covers the basics of defining what an emoji is and their role in case law, electronic discovery, and the challenges of legal translation.
2
5 billion
number of emojis that are sent daily on Facebook Messenger
Emojis are on the rise.
While emoji use would traditionally have been limited to personal communications, they are slowly creeping into the accepted lexicon. This has inevitably led to an increase in the use of emojis in more professional or business-relation communications, and ultimately in their appearance in documents relied on in court.
3The emoji translation challenge
The interpretation of emojis vary widely depending on the context and also on the individuals in question. It’s often described as a dialect, but it can be geographical, age-related, based on social circles, or a combination. That leaves it very much open to lawyers to argue the implied intent when using such messages in court.
