So, what time is it in your local time zone? What day of the week is it? Your answer depends on where you are on the planet and what time of year it is (assuming you’re in a location that observes daylight savings time). A transaction occurring today in the US is happening tomorrow in China, an important detail to be included in ESI along with the UTC standard. As you pass the International Date Line, you either add a day (going west), or subtract a day (going east). At 180 degrees longitude, the International Date Line wiggles its way through the Pacific Ocean, setting the standard for the world’s international date. On the direct opposite side of the Earth from the Prime Meridian is the International Date Line. Most local time zones are offset from the UTC standard by a whole number of hours (UTC−12 to UTC+14), but a few are offset by 30 or 45 minutes (for example, Nepal Standard Time is UTC +05:45).Ĭrossing multiple time zones may also affect the actual date of communication or business. For example, the Eastern Time zone is UTC-5 for Eastern Standard Time (EST) in the fall/winter and UTC-4 for Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) in the spring/summer. Some higher latitude countries such as the United States use daylight savings time for part of the year, typically by changing clocks by an hour. The difference shows the local time zone in China is 13 hours ahead of the US East Coast.Īttention needs to be paid when calculating local time zones. For example, the Eastern Standard time zone in the US is UTC-5. For time zones going west, hours are subtracted for each time zone from Prime Meridian. There are eight local time zones east of the Prime Meridian to China. For instance, the local time zone for our recently announced offices in China, is the China Standard Time zone (CST) which is UTC+8. Countries east of the dividing line add one hour for each local time zone crossed. To calculate the UTC standard time for a particular location, hours are added or subtracted from either side of the Prime Meridian line. How does UTC work?Ĭoordinated Universal Time (UTC) launches from the Prime Meridian, the 0 degree geographical line of longitude that slices through Europe, West Africa and the South Pacific, dividing east from west around the Earth. All local time zones are encoded in ESI as an offset from the UTC time standard. The Network Time Protocol, designed to synchronize the clocks of computers over the Internet, also encodes times using the UTC system. To solve this issue, computer servers, email systems, online services and other computer-based systems are based on the UTC standard. A transaction may occur across multiple time zones, and keeping track of the accurate time is confusing for all parties involved. There are 24 major standardized local time zones in the world.Īs businesses expand to worldwide communication, the need for the universally accepted standard of time, UTC, has increased. Since it is more convenient to keep the same time in areas of close commercial or domestic communication, time zones tend to follow the boundaries of countries and their subdivisions. Learn how improperly handling metadata in litigation can impact your case by downloading this white paper.Ī local time zone is a region on Earth with a uniform time for legal, commercial, and social purposes. Think of UTC as the “baseline” or “true north” when it comes to standardized time. UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is the international agreed-to standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. What is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)? Preparing ESI (Electronically Stored Information) for review and production in UTC will avoid the potential negative ramification of processing ESI in a local time zone that may lead to defensibility and usability issues later in the case. As the world continues to mature into a global economy, the likelihood of eDiscovery spanning multiple time zones becomes more likely than ever before.

East coast utc time zone