If a University of California study is to be believed, 800MB of electronic data is generated every year for every man, woman, and child on the planet. (And some of us are responsible for more than others.)  Be that as it may, this Legal Week article is a nice precis of the state of e-discovery, with particular attention to metadata and the US/UK "state of play."  About metadata, I have little to add other than to state the fervent hope that at this point everybody concerned better know that dealing with metadata is dealing with live ammunition, that it can be (innocently) altered simply by opening a file to look at it, and that severe court-imposed sanctions for altering it are beginning to occur.

Far more interesting is the US/UK divide on e-discovery in general.   Surprisingly, litigation support managers are a rare breed in the UK, whereas no serious US firm would be without one.  The implication?  "US firms may be able to steal a march..." 

So don't think of lit-support as merely an unavoidable cost center; could it be a tool in your new-business development efforts?