With the high number of eDiscovery vendors and the huge amount of ED conferences, webinars, and seminars, you might ask why we would talk about eDiscovery for “the rest of us”. eDiscovery was initially seen as the exclusive domain of large firms with large cases in Federal court but now the fact is that firms of all sizes must know how to handle electronic discovery efficiently and cost-effectively.
Why? Because, as Craig Ball says, “That’s where the evidence is”. In all types of cases. Domestic, criminal, business ventures, SEC investigations, M/A deals …. eDiscovery is not just for big firms anymore.
80% of the firms in this country are considered ”small” as defined by organizations like the ABA and ILTA. But the majority of vendors spend most of their time pursuing cases with high volumes of data and mutliple users, an attitude that leaves the 80% … the rest of us … searching for solutions.
This book will help you in that search. And now through Oct.1, you can get 50% off the list price of $45.00. Just go to the Gulf Coast Legal Technology shop and use the code 07081956 at checkout.
Made it home Thursday nite after one last run thru the exhibit hall and catching uo with folks I missed the first three days. Hard to believe, but as he pointed out in his Pinhawk Law Technology Daily Digest today, Jeff Brandt wasn’t one of them.
Jeff felt that ” “reunion” dominated the conference” and I’d be hard pressed to disagree. It was certainly the dominant unofficial theme this year and overarched all the official proceedings. If there was ever any doubt that ILTA is a true member driven organization, this meeting dispelled it.
One person I did see everywhere was Doug Austin and he did a great recap of the events with Mary Mack and Kaylee Walstad of the EDRM. You can find the video of that interview on DOugs site, EDiscovery Today.
A special shoutout to Beth Anne Stuebe, ILTA Director of Publications and Press, who provided press passes to the many bloggers present and kept us up to speed with daily morning brefings about the show, it’s events and vital statistics.
And of course, my friends and colleagues, the real killer B’s, Craig Bayer and Craig Ball. Never a dull moment, a missed quip or a passed up insightful comment around these two. Thanks guys.
ILTACON22 hit its stride with education on full day 4, the penultimate day of the conference. From the opening keynote by Judge Tanya Kennedy of the New York Appellate to multiple sessions during the day, the strength of the conference really showed all day long. And so did Craig Ball who seemed to be everywhere!
From sessions on Legal Ops, AI, ransomware and Microsoft eDiscovery to a discussion of the ILTA lit support survey results to company updates from KL Discovery and Microsoft, it was a strong day for learning. My colleague Craig Bayer of Optiable was attending for only the second time. He came specifically to attend every session and workshop on Microsoft Teams that he could. And said he was extremely satisfied with the quality of information he received.
The day closed with a wonderful party on the Atrium terrace hosted by CS Disco with a traditional Maryland crab boil, a cigar roller and a steel drum band. I boycotted the iManage party later in the evening because they would not give a ticket to Mike Quartararo, the President of ACEDS. Clumsy move iManage, it’s not all about sales prospects!
But even that sour note couldn’t cancel out a great day of learning, both in the classroom and with colleagues. Heading out now for the last day and sorry that it came so soon.
ILTACON attendees who weren’t at the ACEDS reception sponsored by Everlaw on Monday have been asking me about the toast I gave to Browning as we marked the 8th anniversary of his death.
So, for this who weren’t there, above is the picture I brought, a get well card a number of attendees at ILTACON that year signed and sent to him, and here is what I said, at least as best I can recall.
I started by saying that it was especially bittersweet for me to be at ILTACON this year since it was the first year I was here without Gayle. I noted that she particularly loved the Monday night vendor hall reception since she loved any excuse to costume and it reminded me that the first time I ever saw her was at a Halloween party in a restaurant lounge near my apartment in Seattle where she worked. She was wearing a Wonder Woman costume and I thought to myself, “my goodness that woman has a great, ah, tiara.”
Well, we met and became friends, and not long after we moved to first Sacramento and then San Diego on a very large case I was working on. We met Browning at a tech conference held at the Hotel Del Coronado and we all became fast friends.
It was an unlikely seeming friendship. I was a South Boston Irish Catholic working-class Democrat; Gayle was a Seattle rock & roller whose politics were closer to the Wobblies than any other party while Browning was a north shore of Boston Protestant Republican. But we had a shared love of Bob and Ray, the two and only, the Boston-based comic team who had started in radio back in the days before TV took off. Browning and I were both old enough to have grown up listening to the radio for home entertainment and our love of that old technology was our first common bond.
He was a great friend and mentor not just to me but to countless numbers of other people in the field of legal technology. He was never too busy to give advice and was courteous and kind to everyone. His sense of humor was notorious … I remember him saying about a technology expert with whom he disagreed on just about everything, “often wrong, but never uncertain.” … and of course, his list of swear words that he contributed to firms for their use in searching documents for offensive language was legendary.
He was the type of attorney I wanted to be when I was a young man. Learned and articulate without being pompous or overbearing and always polite and cordial. He was a great friend, colleague, attorney and technologist and he will be missed by us all.
I noted several of the people in the room who had been close to Browning and also a few other friends besides Gayle who have left us, including Jim Keane, Nigel Murray and Ross Kodner. I then finished by raising a glass in a toast with the phrase Bob and Ray used to sign off their radio show.
I recently wrote an article for the Federal Defenders about US v Morgan (Western District of New York, 1:18-CR-00108 EAW, decided Oct 8, 2020). The case is an example of diligent defense counsel challenging the government on how it produced terabytes of data and features a detailed analysis of those productions and their failings by Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford which resulted in a dismissal without prejudice.
You can read the entire article on the Defenders blog below
Rachi Messing and I are just teeing up our 2022 interviews for the eDiscovery Channel so in the meantime I thought I’d start the new year with this little gem. Chad Roberts turned the tables on me at the Georgetown AEDI in Washington DC last year shortly before Thanksgiving.
Chad, for those of you who dont know him, is the founder of eDiscovery CoCounsel, an electronic discovery firm for plaintiffs based in Florida. Chad is well known in eDiscovery circles as a seasoned litigator with a solid technical background. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking on several panels with him over the years, so I was delighted to accept his invitation to interview me.
You can find the video at Chads eDiscovery CoCounsel YouTube channel here , on my EDiscovery Channel YouTube channel here or the link below.
Anyone who missed our traditional end of year chat with a member of the judiciary, here is a repost of Rachi and I talking with Judge Paul Grimm of the USDC Maryland. Judge Grimm is insightful, thoughtful and well spoken so Joe Bob says check it out.
Nah. I was being nice. But my old friend Bill Gallivan, CEO and co-founder with his brother Dan of Digital WarRoom, asked me if could narrow my focus a bit and write something about AI with the thesis that legal AI requires specificity of scope and the scope of current applications is NOT very wide.
As Dan put it during our conversations on the new post,:
“one of the better descriptions of “modern” AI comes from IBM (https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/what-is-artificial-intelligence) which makes it clear all current AI is weak (narrow). Specific and useful tools based on (beautiful) piles of math but ultimately not the focus of general solution or strategy in any domain let alone one as nuanced as “legal” .”
Well at the same time I came across two other articles that took nearly the same position as I did in my original post so I wrote something up around Bills concept and those articles. The folks at Digital WarRoom have posted it on their site under the title Legal AI Misses the Bullseye and you can read it on their blog at https://www.digitalwarroom.com/blog/legal-ai-misses-the-bullseye .
Did you miss this post last week? No worries, listen here to learn how Amy came to become the Litigation Support Guru. Her LSG site and blog have been a great resource for many years and this is your chance to learn more about Amy and her journey through #ediscovery.