The process once primarily involved paper; electronic discovery takes in the various, and increasingly ubiquitous, digital formats.
But the term also can serve more broadly as a digital-age description of what we enable when we post on Facebook.
Or write an e-mail or use an iPhone or E-ZPass - or, for that matter, swipe a security card.
"People don't realize how many different places information is stored," Kearney says during an interview at his office.
Devices making our lives more convenient can also make details about our lives more accessible, like virtual fingerprints and footprints.
And people, including those serving on juries - or being heard by them - often don't consider the potential consequences of too much information.
"There have been many mistrials across the country [because of] Facebook pages of jurors, or family members of jurors, talking about the trial," consultant Ann Greeley says during a telephone interview.
A psychologist who works for DecisionQuest, a nationwide consulting firm, Greeley served with Kearney on the June 22 panel at Tavistock Country Club.
Jury consultants such as Greeley help attorneys by combing through publicly available information about prospective jurors. This includes the sort of material displayed on Facebook home pages, visible to anyone browsing the Web. More detailed biographical information is only for "friends" approved by the page owner.
"We are not allowed to try to 'friend' somebody who's a potential juror" to get access to their additional information, Greeley says.
"There's nothing that says a lawyer can't access the public information. . . . It's as if you wrote something on a wall, and we saw it," says Kearney. "What you can't do is misrepresent who you are, or who you're representing, in order to gain access to that private area of Facebook."
