Illuminating eDiscovery

In case you missed it, Relativity Fest 2018 is over and in the books, bringing together over 2,000 ediscovery fans in downtown Chicago from across the global community, eager to explore the intersection of law and technology. This year’s four-day conference featured an impressive 300 speakers, 200 sessions, and an undeniable feeling of possibility.

The 2018 Corporate Counsel Forum, held over a sunny two days in September, proved interesting and thought provoking. It was also reassuring to learn that what I set out in my first article (pre-2018 Corporate Counsel Forum), was true. Corporate data can be a beast to deal with because of complexities of legacy data systems, the need to stay current with the data privacy agenda, and the slow, difficult nature of inaccessible data when in house legal teams need to respond to regulatory and legal requests. The beast is still very much alive!

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the largest ever ILTACON, the annual meeting of the International Legal Technology Association. While many noteworthy topics were discussed as the creative juices flowed among the best and brightest of the legal IT world, below are the top five buzzworthy themes that stood out after attending (and tweeting about) dozens of sessions.

This week, I will be participating in a panel at the Corporate Counsel Forum 2018 to discuss how to transform the data privacy agenda into a trust-based agenda. My esteemed fellow speakers include representatives of Microsoft and Google, two of the largest players in the big data market. The audience will consist mainly of General Counsel representing organisations who are similarly frustrated by issues pertaining to ease of access with regard to their data. Data privacy is merely one more example of the issues exasperating effective data...

Last month I went to a conference about the impact of the December 2015 FRCP proportionality amendments. The group included plaintiffs’ and defense counsel, in-house lawyers, and service providers. On the question of real-world change, plaintiffs’ counsel reported that so far their worries about undue limits on discovery haven’t materialized. Consistent with that experience, defense counsel said they haven’t yet seen the hoped-for benefits from the amendments. Part of the reason seems to be that many practitioners either don’t know about...