An interesting piece by Jim Calloway published on January 5, 2009 and available here, at LLRX.com presents the insight on the need to understand at least the basics of metadata.

The legal ethics implications of metadata “mining” are no longer just of interest to the lawyers processing electronic discovery or the ethics mavens. The ethical implications of one lawyer examining the metadata in a file received from another lawyer have generated a lot of discussion. This article will cover the legal ethics opinions issued so far and give you tips on how to avoid exposing confidential information unintentionally via metadata.

Take a minute and read about what metadata is, author’s conclusion regarding the ethical implications, ethics opinions on metadata, and some of the suggested ways to guard against metadata disasters. And, of course, feel free to share your experiences!