The new rules were created by an advisory committee to the Judicial Conference of the United States , which oversees administrative and policy issues for federal courts, and were adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 1, said Ron Hedges, magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court in Newark.

Unless Congress acts to change the rules, they will become effective on Dec. 1, Hedges said.

The new e-discovery rules are listed in a 300-plus page document that was created by the advisory committee.

The rules require that when two companies are involved in civil litigation, they must meet within 30 days of the filing of the lawsuit to decide how to handle electronic data. The parties must agree on which records are to be shared and in which electronic format, as well as on a definition for "accessible data," said John Bace, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn.

It was partly to ensure compliance with legal discovery rules that EMC National Life Co. in Urbandale, Iowa, started using an e-mail archiving service from Fortiva Inc. in Norwalk, Conn., as part of a general corporate document-retention policy. "The ability to do legal discovery with their searching capabilities sold us on [the Fortiva service]," said Marc Comstock, assistant vice president and technical services manager at EMC National Life.