Virtual LegalTech on 16 June – Advanced Litigation Technologies with LeClairRyan

I took part in the very first Virtual LegalTech, ALM’s imaginative way of delivering webinars online in a series running through a day, giving delegates most of the benefits of attending a conference without the cost and burden off getting to it.

I have now been asked to moderate a session for the 16 June Virtual LegalTech. The subject is Advanced Technologies for Litigation Support Professionals which goes out from 11:15am to 12:15pm Eastern Time today, 16 June.

I had a free hand to choose the panelists. At the real LegalTech in New York in February, I met Bill Belt and Daryl Shetterly, partners in LeClairRyan’s discovery solutions practice, who subsequently came to visit us in Oxford on one of their trips to the UK. They are contributors to LeClairRyan’s  ediscovery blog posts, with thoughtful articles which are practical and bang on point.

They kindly accepted my invitation to join me on the webinar, and we have put together a set of slides which begins with the New York Times article Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software of March, goes through the different types of technology LeClairRyan and other ediscovery firms use in practice, and ends with ideas for establishing an ediscovery practice.

Other speakers during the day include Ann-Marie Gibbs, National Director of Consulting at Daegis, Monica Bay, Editor-in-Chief of Law Technology News, US Magistrate Judge David Waxse and former US Magistrate Judge Ronald Hedges. The judicial panel is called Why Lawyers Cannot Afford to Ignore Technology which, I think, will nicely complement our session.

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Georgetown Law eDiscovery Training Academy crosses the bridge

The technology I really want to see is a time machine or some kind of teleportation device. I once attended conferences in Barcelona and Sydney in the same week. I have had breakfast in Sydney and dinner in Washington on the same day and, later this year, I have to do a three-day conference in Germany and a two-day conference in Washington in the same week. I have had to accept that I cannot be with Sedona in Lisbon and with InnoXcell in Hong Kong next week (Hong Kong wins), and I was equally sorry last week that I could not be simultaneously in Frankfurt and Georgetown.

The Georgetown event was the Georgetown Law eDiscovery Training Academy. Guidance Software gave copies of its Encase Forensic Software for each delegate to use during the week and Craig Ball explained the computer context and showed how to use EnCase.

The faculty for the five days included US Magistrate Judge John Facciola, Chief US Magistrate Judge Paul Grimm, Michael Arkfeld (Arkfeld & Associates LLC), Jason Baron (National Archives & Records Administration), Maura Grossman (Wachtel,Lipton, Rosen & Katz), Tom O’Connor (Gulf Coast Legal Technology Center),  and Larry Center (Georgetown CLE).

Patrick Burke, Senior Director and Assistant General Counsel of Guidance Software describes the event in two blog posts here  and here, and Tom O’Connor wrote about the wrap-up here. I like in particular Judge Facciola’s comment “this conference crossed the bridge.  I for one can’t go back to superficial lectures any more.  I’ve never seen anything like this.  It’s been a terribly exciting experience for me.” 

Training and education are rather like marketing – we are always looking out for new ways of delivering knowledge and understanding. Events like this take an immense amount of organisation and need the support such as Guidance Software gave to this one. For the foreseeable future, articles, seminars and conferences will be the backbone of the education effort. This event shows us that there are different and more imaginative ways of getting messages across. I wish I had been there.

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eDiscovery in Germany: moderating a conference for AccessData in Frankfurt

It was a dark and stormy night, and as he watched the lightning split the clouds and heard the thunder rolling across the castle’s turrets and towers, he thought sod this for a game of soldiers. With six unbroken hours of speaking and moderating and a late night behind me, and only a late morning flight ahead, surely I can just be left just to sleep for a change.

The occasion was AccessData’s Electronic Discovery Conference in Germany, run in partnership with H7b1 and DRS Digital. The venue was the Schlosshotel Kronberg just outside Frankfurt, quite the finest venue I have ever spoken in. It was the home of Victoria, eldest daughter of Queen Victoria, and Empress-Dowager of Germany following the death of her husband Frederick after only 99 days as Emperor. She was the mother of Wilhelm II, which is why Britain and Germany were ruled by cousins during the Great War. It belongs firmly in the English Gothic Revival style, and the curious but comfortable mixture of cathedral-like pillars and warm, red carpets is very English, whilst the exterior is unmistakably German. The menu is similarly divided, speaking of “the “englischer Tradition der Afternoon Tea” with “Scones mit Clotted Cream und Muffins”. It is a very tangible reminder of the close relationship which once existed between Britain and Germany and the similarities in outlook and much else.

There is much that is different, of course, and the discovery of documents for litigation is one of those differences. Germany, like other countries in Europe, is having to recognise that electronic documents, and the means of handling them, can no longer be dismissed glibly as something which Americans do, with the implication that it is an unnecessary and unnecessarily expensive game. It has something of that about it, certainly, to non-US eyes, but it is important to distinguish between different points here: on the one hand we have the fundamental principle that the documents hold the contemporaneous evidence and its allied equitable principle that those who seek help from the court must be transparent about their evidence; on the other, we have the rules and procedures governing the scope of discovery and its production. One can praise one and stand amazed, sometimes, at the other.