News Media

Numerous eDiscovery thought leaders converged at the first annual Legal Technology Leadership Summit at Amelia Island, Florida, on September 6-8, 2011 to learn and discuss the ever-changing impact of technology on the legal world. Anne Kershaw and Patrick Oot, of the nonprofit eDiscovery Institute (EDI), brought together a group of high-impact panelists that included corporate counsel, eDiscovery experts, corporate IT professionals and judges to discuss today’s eDiscovery challenges facing the legal community. Falcon Discovery, a pioneer in delivering co-sourced eDiscovery, compliance and technology management services, was one of the privileged sponsors of the Summit.

 

This summit boasted representatives from prominent organizations such as Proctor & Gamble, Fedex, Dell, Pfizer, Chevron, Dish Network, NBC Universal, and Fannie Mae. With so many good sessions, it was difficult to pick our favorites; but, for those that were unable to attend, here are some key takeaways from the Legal Technology leadership Summit for 2011: 

 

• When Lawyers Face Discovery Sanctions. The panelists reconsidered the Qualcomm opinion sanctioning Qualcomm and six of its attorneys, which was later vacated. Frank Cialone (Shartsis Friese LLP) stressed the importance of documenting your actions so that you may later defend your efforts to collect, review and produce electronically stored information.

 

• Litigation-ready, In-house Strategy. Kimbir Tate (McKesson), Edward Gramling (Pfizer) and Martha Mazzone (Fidelity) urged attendees to implement repeatable and documented in-house discovery processes that are defensible in court. In the panel, introduced by Falcon’s CEO Don McLaughlin, the panelists suggested that an in-sourced eDiscovery model not only provides process repetition, but it also often delivers significant cost savings and consistency across matters.

 

• Getting the Right Players at the Table. It was touted across the board, from the entertainment industry to biotech, how vital it is that legal decision makers have the correct stakeholders input PRIOR to making any agreements about electronically stored information. Mark Herrmann (Aon) stated that the greatest risk was during the preservation stage, but noted that preservation is not an area in which companies spend the most money.

 

• Proportionality and the Burdens of Over-Preservation. Panelists shared their thoughts on creating an environment that balances necessary preservation and collection efforts with proportionate litigation costs. They stressed that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure should be amended to develop clear standards around the duty to preservation, the scope of discovery, and sanctions for the willful destruction of evidence, to help regulate the industry.

 

 • Machine-assisted Review Continues to Emerge. Consistent with Judge Peck’s commentary from the Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat that we reported previously on, the trend of litigators leveraging technology-assisted review is becoming more and more apparent. Pallab Chakroborty from Oracle reiterated the benefits of machine-assisted review and how it, if used effectively and knowledgeably, can reduce time and cost associated with production and privilege reviews.