An acquisition and an appointment point to Epiq consolidation and service delivery

Stories happen when they happen, and the copy / paste news sites and story aggregation people do a good job at rushing the contents of the latest press release to your virtual door. G K Chesterton’s Father Brown famously talked of hiding a leaf in a forest or a pebble on the beach and, whilst I must not rely exclusively on 19th and early 20th century fictional detectives for my parallels (it was Sherlock Holmes earlier this week), I am not much interested in the Gadarene rush to regurgitate press releases at the same time as everyone else, based on the same (and generally sam-ey) texts. I’d rather not just be another leaf in the forest.

What makes an industry story interesting is its place in a context or a trend – how it moves things along or provides factual evidence of an otherwise anecdotally-based assertion. Two recent announcements by Epiq Systems warrant more than merely passing on the press releases. One is Epiq’s acquisition of De Novo Legal which took place between Christmas and New Year, a time when, as you would expect, my page views graph shows a dip to less than half of its normal level; accordingly, I just passed on the PR, saying that I would come back to the story in due course. The appointment of David Fryer as Epiq’s General Manager of UK Operations was announced just before LegalTech, when industry minds were focused on product releases and all the usual pre-show hype. It warranted more than being just another leaf in that forest.

I spoke this week to David Fryer and to Greg Wildisen, Epiq’s International Managing Director, to find out more about David’s appointment and about De Novo.

The Convergence of eDiscovery and Information Governance – the movie

I have referred more than once to the webinar which Nuix organised just before LegalTech with the title The Convergence of eDiscovery and Information Governance. I moderated it, and the panel comprised Craig Ball, Attorney and Forensic Technologist, Stephen Stewart, CTO for Nuix and David Cowen, Managing Director for The Cowen Group.

We ran it also as a session at LegalTech, and I did not really focus on the significance of the camera at the front of the audience. We were in fact being filmed, and the result is now on YouTube in four parts – the first is here, and the rest follow automatically.

I referred in opening to a comment made by one of the people who listened to the webinar, who thought that I should have let the speakers say everything they had to say about their subjects. Each of these panel members could comfortably fill an hour on his own and, as I pointed out, we had even less time for the panel session than we had had for the webinar. The only real challenge for a moderator running a panel of this calibre is to bring the session to a close on time and with all the slides covered; that occasionally requires a guillotine.

There was some overlap between the subjects which we covered and a dinner hosted by Nuix the previous evening. I wrote about that in a post called Innovation and informed risk-taking are an eDiscovery duty which defines part at least of my agenda for the coming year.

EU promises data protection savings and reduced burdens on business

The European Commission has collected together information about its proposed reforms of the EU Data Protection Rules, including the press release of 21 January, the press conference with Vice President Viviane Reding of the same date, and a number of fact sheets, surveys, legislative texts and other information.

For those who like their source material raw, this is the place to look.

Vice President Reding has followed that up with an article on CNN called How Europe is Dealing with Online Privacy. Call me cynical, but if her “one-stop shop for businesses to deal with regulators”, and the employment of Eurocrats to run it, results in the promised reduction of administrative burdens and a saving of €2.3 billion a year for businesses then I will eat my proverbial hat.

CY4OR takes social media advice to HR and the workplace

Much of the proactive advice which companies need about eDisclosure and data security is aimed at IT departments who have the job of managing data, and at legal departments who have responsibility for the company’s potential eDisclosure obligations.

HR departments are often overlooked, yet they have responsibility for the contracts which define employees’ responsibilities and for initiating many of the investigations into the conduct of employees.

The ease with which information can now be created and disseminated via various social media outlets makes it the more important for HR departments to understand the threats which lie in the use of social media, and to know what can be done both to pre-empt them and to detect and investigate breaches of the law or of company policy.

Predictive Coding’s Silver Blaze: the dogs who didn’t bark in the night-time

Perhaps the only person who will understand my heading instantly is the judge whose Opinion in Da Silva Moore v Publicis Groupe is at the centre of eDiscovery attention this week.  US Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck is as much an authority on Sherlock Holmes as he is on the use of technology in litigation, and will recognise the story of the eponymous horse and the strangely silent canine.

Well, that’s broken the first two rules of good web writing – follow an obscure heading with an opening paragraph which takes the reader yet further away from comprehension. What is the connection between horses, dogs and fictional detectives, on the one hand, and an important electronic discovery Opinion on the other?

Silver Blaze is a race-winning horse of whom are great things were expected. He disappears on the eve of a big race and his trainer is found dead.   The following dialogue takes place between Holmes and the detective, Gregory:

Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

On Friday afternoon, Judge Peck issued an Opinion and Order in the Da Silva Moore case in which he said “This judicial opinion now recognises that computer assisted review is an acceptable way to search relevant ESI in appropriate cases.” You will hurry, no doubt, to see what Recommind, the most vociferous proponent of predictive coding, has to say; this Opinion is important to them as it is to anyone else with an interest in reducing the costs of eDiscovery, and they are one of the more voluble users of social media to get their messages out. Nothing.

You know, perhaps, that Ralph Losey always writes on a Sunday; he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to write up an Opinion like this, would he? You find instead  an article called Picking Battles and Knowing When Not to Speak; it has an animated version of Ralph, dressed in pigeon-fancier’s flat hat, braces and (apparently) nothing else, describing himself as a “happy guinea pig”, followed by a few worthy quotations and links. What is going on?

In which Da Silva Moore brings out the Anglo-Saxon demotic in me

I am not going to try and compete with the Clearwell / Symantec writing team as it comments on developments in the Da Silva Moore v Publicis Groupe case, the first one in which the use of predictive coding, the most exciting eDiscovery technology development of our time (I speak generically here, not of any one product) is debated in front of one of the few judges who understands it and the contribution it can make to cost-effective eDiscovery.

Yesterday brought us Matthew Nelson’s article Judge Peck Issues Order Addressing “Joint Predictive Coding Protocol” in Da Silva Moore eDiscovery case. Phil Favro takes up the baton today with Plaintiffs Object to Predictive Coding Order, Argue Lack of Transparency in the eDiscovery Process. Both articles give clear recitals of the state of play, hyperlinked to appropriate sources, and I have a big enough list of articles to write without treading over the same ground.

I am, anyway, too busy banging my head against the desk after reading the Declaration of the plaintiff’s expert witness in support of their objection.  How have we come to this?  I give no view on the propriety of the Objection or on the content of the Declaration. I am just wondering what it has all got to do with the “just, speedy and inexpensive” requirement of Rule 1 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, with proportionality, with the obligation of cooperation imposed by the rules and expressly required by the judge, and with the evidence on which this case will turn.

Sod all, I’d say.

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Words are the easy bit: EU Parliament debates EU – US data privacy concerns

An article on EUObserver.com reports on a debate last week in the European Parliament which highlighted the conflict between US demands for data and EU privacy legislation.

The article’s title is Commission Downplays Parliament EU–US Data Privacy Concerns – “downplays” being Eurospeak for “brush it under the carpet and pretend it is not a problem”. Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding’s answer that a US law enforcement authority would have to use “existing channels of cooperation and mutual legal assistance agreements” to get data from companies in the EU does not reflect the view taken hitherto by those authorities when they make their demands. “Stand and deliver” better describes their approach.

It is not just US authorities. As an MEP pointed out, the “existing channels” do not help much when a US civil court requires the disclosure of data stored in the EU. Fears that US law could have “extraterritorial effect within Europe” and that European laws “could be over-ruled by third country laws” are legitimate fears as a practical and pragmatic matter – there is no need for US courts to assert expressly the primacy of US law when they can simply punish a party for failing to produce documents.

One MEP pointed out that it would be “ironic if it were easier for third countries to process European citizens’ data in their territory than for European entities to do so in Europe”.  It is not really a matter of one being “easier” than the other. The data is processed in the US in possible breach of EU laws either because the parties and courts are unaware of the restrictions or because the parties take the view that the Scylla of sanctions is more palatable than the Charybdis of EU fines and other penalties.

As I have reported elsewhere, we are beginning to see an appreciation on the US side not only that the comity of nations requires respect for the laws of foreign jurisdictions but that a combination of cooperation, transparency and technology ought to allow a reconciliation between US demands and EU restrictions, with recent recommendations from both the ABA and the Sedona Conference to that effect.

Digital Reef adds Predictive Priority, enhances Relativity integration and opens its processing power to LSPs

Digital Reef is offering legal service providers the opportunity to make use of its SaaS processing and early case assessment tools on a revenue sharing basis.  This should help LSPs who find themselves with more work than they can handle and who traditionally have the choice between struggling to manage it all or passing the work to someone else, with the risk of losing the client as well as the fee.

The Digital Reef service – the press release is here – allows LSPs to put their own brand label on processing which is actually undertaken on Digital Reef’s servers, which are capable of handling 17 Tb of data per day.

As I have written elsewhere, UK eDiscovery solutions provider CY4OR has recently acquired the business of eOrigin. That brought with it Nick Pollard as CY4OR’s new head of eDiscovery together with eOrigin’s role as a Digital Reef partner. Nick Pollard said of the new Digital Reef program:

“as a leading provider of Digital Reef to the UK market, we are excited about the innovations that the company is making.  CY4OR is already rolling out a similar model in the UK which is generating a lot of interest amongst Litigation Support teams.  We have the eDisclosure tools and resources in place now to offer our clients the software as a service (SaaS) model and believe it will enable law firms to reap rewards in an increasingly competitive market”.

This is one of a spate of Digital Reef announcements recently. Two press releases came out at the end of January, one announcing closer integration with Relativity and one about Digital Reef’s new predictive priority functionality.  I knew about the latter – indeed I am quoted in the press release – but announcements made once LegalTech has started tend to get overwhelmed by everything happening at the show and in its aftermath (I still have one panel to report on,  and want to come back to the one new application which I actually saw in New York).

These are free-standing developments, each with its own value for what Relativity’s Andrew Sieja describes as giving users “control to construct the best eDiscovery solution to meet their needs”. When the new analytics at the front end are added to the service offered to LSPs and to Relativity integration, Digital Reef seem to have an integrated business plan as well as a technology solution.

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Recent posts on Google+ to 23 February

I intend to start periodic cross-links from here to my Google+ page to make sure that my posts there get picked  up.  The Google Plus posts are in no sense of lesser importance than what appears here, nor are they taking content away from the blog – I have done more blog posts so far in 2012 than by the same date in 2011.

They allow me quickly to cover a wider range of topics and, specifically, to point to other articles of interest with something slightly more substantial than a re-tweet.  If many of them have a US origin, that reflects the quality, as well as the quantity, of the material which derives from the US. Much of it has application in any jurisdiction where electronic discovery/disclosure is required.

The present interest in predictive coding, in information governance, and in data protection and privacy, for example, are all things which ought to be seen important in the UK as well – and elsewhere. If Singapore suddenly seems to be in the news, that reflects what I am hearing anecdotally as well as what I read.

A subsidiary purpose is the improvement in the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of both my own sites and those to which I link. It may be a coincidence, but my daily count of page views on the blog has risen from last year’s average of 189 to 263 since I started using Google+

The Google plus page is here.

Applied Discovery sees an early Valentine from Judge Peck

Applied Discovery has a double interest in the Da Silva Moore v Publicis Groupe case which came before Judge Peck just before Valentines Day. As a software provider, it offers technology-assisted review (which it calls “predictive tagging”) powered by Equivio->Relevance as part of its Leverage Suite – the press release from last August is here. Applied Discovery is also one of the best  commentators on eDiscovery practice and the developments which matter to its clients, with weekly updates and good original content.

Both of these interests come together in an article called Did Judge Peck Send Us an Early Valentine? by Applied Discovery’s Ignatius Grande, which picks out points of interest from the published transcript of the Da Silva Moore eDiscovery hearing.  It would be fair to say that many of the essential characteristics of a Valentine’s Card are missing –  the words “Stop whining and stop the sandbagging. This goes for both sides. Get along.”,  whilst definitely about relationships, are not what you would hope to find on the doormat on 14 February.

Ignatius Grande rightly picks out the strands of wider significance: it is important to hear a judge say on the record that technology-assisted review “certainly works better than most of the alternatives, if not all of the alternatives”;  lawyers also need a reminder that the goal is not perfection but making the process “significantly better than the alternative without nearly as much cost”; the emphasis on the human input –  technology assisted review “is only as good as the training that it gets”, and on the obligation to cooperate, are also important.

US cases which may shape the future of predictive coding

Matthew Nelson of Symantec has an interesting article on Forbes.com this week. Called Federal Judges Consider Important Issues That Could Shape the Future of Predictive Coding Technology, it considers the possible impact of two cases presently before the US courts. Don’t look away, you UK litigators – the principles apply to you as well.

One is Da Silva Moore v Publicis Groupe et al., where the parties agreed to use predictive coding technology but have been unable to agree how it should be used. I have mentioned this case before, but am keeping my powder dry on it until we have the hoped-for written opinion from US Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck.

The second case is one I had not come across, Kleen Products LLC v Packaging Corporation of America, et al, where the discovery issues are being heard by US Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan. Here, one party seeks an order requiring the other to use predictive coding. The usual form of these disputes (going wider than any particular technology) is that Party A chooses a technology and Party B challenges its use, with the dispute generally coming down to how the technology was used rather than the particular choice of application.  Now we have Party A seeking to compel Party B to adopt a particular type of application.

Matthew Nelson touches on a number of interesting points. One might be diverted by the plaintiff’s suggestion that  predictive coding is akin to a car where the defendants want merely to use “the best available horse”.  A couple of well-chosen Craig Ball quotations are brought in, one on court validation showing why I don’t seek to compete with Craig for colourful imagery (even I have never managed “court validation” and “steaming pile of crap” in the same sentence), and one asserting correctly that “the integrity of the process hinges on the carpenter, not on the hammer.”

Once again, the handsome man comes out badly in a Losey film

The good-looking, self-confident male never does well in a Losey film. Don Giovanni is hurled down into Hell as Donna Anna has her revenge. Who can forget the handsome face of William (Michael York) as his girlfriend’s (another Anna as it happens) pointed heel stabs down into his face as she escapes from the smashed car in Accident. James Fox in The Servant, Alan Bates in The Go-Between – no, the men do not come out well in a Losey film, and the better-looking they are, the further they fall.

Sorry? Excuse me a moment. Oh, I see. Wrong Losey. They told me to knock out a few words about how the male character is beaten by the female lead in the latest Losey film, and I naturally assumed that they meant Joseph Losey. That image of the elegant heel in the bloodied face seemed just right. I saw Accident shortly after it came out in 1967 and it sticks in the mind somewhat. If I had stopped to think, I would have realised that it was unlikely that a man born in 1909 was still directing films anyway.

Back to the beginning. The good-looking, self-confident male never does well in a Losey film. From the moment the cameras roll in the the latest Ralph Losey thriller, it is clear that the arrogance of the male character will be defeated by the cool self-asurance of the female lawyer who is pitted against him as they argue about preservation and search efforts. Its title, Animation Showing How Not to Cooperate in an eDiscovery Conference may lack the snappiness of the other Losey’s film names, but you can’t have everything.

The male lawyers’ reiterated line “Take it or leave it” makes the lady (she’s bound to be called Anna as well) angry. She doesn’t settle for trivial revenge like Hell fires or stamping on his face – she is off to the judge.

Full marks to Ralph Losey for his latest animated way of making eDiscovery accessible.

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Huron eDiscovery Panel at LegalTech as the cross-border climate begins to change

My wide-angle lens is being repaired, so I have no photograph of the panel which Nigel Murray of Huron Legal moderated at LegalTech. There were eleven of us at the table for two consecutive sessions with the title A GC’s Nightmare – a US EDiscovery Request into Europe. The first part outlined the problems raised by the EU’s attitude to data protection and privacy and its conflict with US ediscovery requirements; the second part looked at practical ways to deal with the issues which arise. More than 140 people came to one or both sessions.

The panelists were chosen to give a rounded view of the legal and the practical problems from both sides of the Atlantic. Craig Cannon from Bank of America and Carter White of Lummus Technology Inc. represented the ones with the nightmares, the sleepless representatives of major US corporations whose business inevitably takes them into areas – and not just Europe – where US eDiscovery requirements conflict with more restrictive ideas about the use of documents and data. Amor Esteban of Hardy Shook & Bacon and Browning Marean of DLA Piper US offered the view from the US lawyers based in the US, whilst Farrah Pepper, recently moved from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to a role as in-house discovery counsel at GE had both viewpoints to offer. Natascha Gerlach is an attorney at Clearly Gottlieb in Brussels and she and Vince Neicho of Allen & Overy in London had the hands-on view from the European end. US Magistrate Judge Frank Maas of SDNY and Senior Master Steven Whitaker from the High Court in London gave the viewpoint of judges who deal with either end of the relevant requests. My role was to talk on the theme “How others see us” and to cover information governance. Nigel Murray was his usual urbane self, the conductor of an international choir whose singers were not guaranteed to sing to any pre-conceived score (there wasn’t one), but whose contributions covered every aspect of the problem.

With 300 words down just to say who was there, it would be foolish of me to try and summarise what each panelist said. Quite apart from anything else, whilst we had each chosen or been given our defined topics, there was no published running order. This allowed Nigel to follow themes as they developed, but since none of us knew who was going to be called next, this scribe had no realistic chance of capturing the contributions as they emerged – try doing this when you are on a panel, and you end up missing your own cue, conscious, perhaps, that you have just been asked a question in front of 140 people but with no idea what it was.

Innovation and informed risk-taking are an eDiscovery duty

A speaker at a Nuix dinner prompts the thought that eDiscovery innovation lies in simply doing what the rules and codes of professional conduct require anyway. By chance, Ralph Losey has written on that subject this week. Risk is a challenge not a bar, and the lawyers’ duty to clients and the court lies in a cool and informed assessment of risk by people who know what they are doing and are prepared to stand by their judgements. Much the same applies to clients embarking on defensible deletion.

One of the few things which stuck in my head when I was an articled clerk (trainee solicitor as they are now more prosaically called) was a stern injunction from a senior solicitor to the effect that  “there are no marks for originality in the law”. It was probably wise advice in a profession which had changed little since my father was an articled clerk and which, in many ways, has changed little since. I cannot recall what I had suggested to deserve this reproof – outsourcing document production to teams of monks recently made redundant by the dissolution of the monasteries perhaps –  but it was easy then, as it is now, for a young incomer to mock the time-honoured ways of doing things.  They soon kicked it out of us.

It is worth repeating a paragraph from my first report on LegalTech 2012, because much of what was in it derives from the two events which are the subject of this post –  a dinner organised by Nuix and a panel which I moderated for them at the conference. The paragraph read:

Other subjects came my way: risk, and the sense that some lawyers, judges and companies are beginning to re-evaluate defensible deletion, their fear of sanctions, and the benefits of new technology, as the expense (the other half of the risk-benefit equation) continues to mount; innovation (in the true sense, not the lazy label “innovative” used as  a grand way of saying “new”);  consolidation amongst providers (though no one guessed how soon we would see the next acquisition); the marginalisation of law firms who ignore the way the wind is blowing; recruitment and training both of the young and of senior people transferring from other industries.

The guest speaker at the Nuix insight dinner was Frank Moss, former director of the MIT Media Lab, “a fantastic hotbed of no-holds-barred creativity, where scientists and students invent and experiment without any fear of failure”. Frank Moss disclaimed any deep knowledge of information governance or electronic discovery, but it quickly became clear that his ideas had application to any business – or, indeed, to any activity where received ideas edge out new ones. The well-known law firm principle “this is how we have always done things here” has no place at MIT Media Lab.

Hobs Legal Docs has an office in Manchester and a presence on Twitter

In my post Information Governance, UK eDisclosure and International eDiscovery in three days, I reported on a seminar which Terry Harrison of Hobs Legal Docs organised at HSBC’s Northern regional office in Manchester and which I spoke at. What I did not know when I wrote my account of the evening was that the post-seminar party continued until well after midnight whilst I was sleeping the sleep of the just at an airport hotel.

Hobs Legal Docs had just opened a new office in Manchester when we gave that seminar, and I now have the address details. It is at 4 Whitworth Street West, Manchester M3 5WY. The telephone number is 0161 832 6680.

I have the sense, and not just from Hobs, that solicitors (and, judging from our Manchester audience, some barristers as well) in some of the major commercial centres outside London are beginning to appreciate the opportunities opening for firms who can genuinely say that they can manage eDisclosure efficiently. Now that it no longer needs large teams, eDisclosure does not limit document-heavy litigation to big firms – armed with competent lawyers, outsourced technology and, perhaps, managed document review, smaller firms can take on large litigation and can meet much bigger firms on equal terms.

Taking stock of the eDiscovery world

This is a good moment to pause a little and look around the eDiscovery / eDisclosure world.  The wide range of topics which make this such an interesting field are all getting an airing at once. The stream of useful and relevant tweets is such that I had to turn it off to get anything done. If it appears to have a largely US flavour, much of it also has relevance in the UK and elsewhere.

I do not feel under any particular pressure to capture it all as it happens, and there are back-room things – the agendas for three forthcoming UK conferences and a White Paper, for example – which have some priority in terms of time allocation than the news stream which, if its elements are of importance at all, will still be so in a week’s time.  My web site also needs some attention to logos and indexes. It is helpful, nevertheless, to list some of the pending stories, if only to head off polite suggestions that I may have missed them. Since the point here is speed, I will ignore my usual rule about hyperlinking to everything referred to.

My involvement in or attendance at some recent events will be covered shortly. Monique Altheim has released videos of the eDiscovery sessions we did at CPDP in Brussels.  Nuix hosted a thought-provoking dinner at LegalTech which stimulated thought about the real meaning of “innovation” in eDiscovery.  It has been said of the cross-border panels hosted at LegalTech by Huron Legal and led by Nigel Murray that “the substantive information conveyed was top shelf” and there is talk of a re-run. Data protection and privacy move back up the agenda anyway thanks to the draft EU data protection regulation.

Integration the target as Guidance Software buys CaseCentral

It was Twitter, of course, which first brought the news that Guidance Software had agreed to acquire CaseCentral.  The first tweet came so early that the Guidance web page announcing the deal was a blank placeholder; its page title confirmed that the story was true, but there was as yet no content. The tweets multiplied and the official Guidance Software announcement appeared shortly afterwards.

That announcement is here. The CaseCentral equivalent is here.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for eDiscovery Software, published in May 2011, opened with two “Strategic Planning Assumptions”:

By 2014, consolidation will have eliminated one in every four enterprise e-discovery vendors.
By 2013, software as a service (SaaS) and business process utilities will account for 75% of the revenue derived from processing, review, analysis and production of electronically stored information (ESI).

Although the report was, as its name suggests, concerned with eDiscovery software vendors, the consolidation prediction was made in respect of the wider eDiscovery vendor market, implying, correctly as it has turned out so far, that we would see aggregation of the various components of the externally-provided eDiscovery process.

The Magic Quadrant itself appeared opposite the Strategic Planning Assumptions, showing Guidance Software as a Leader and CaseCentral amongst the Visionaries. Of those whose names appeared there,  Autonomy had already acquired the digital assets of Iron Mountain by the time the Magic Quadrant appeared, and has itself since been acquired by HP (who was not itself qualified to appear in the Quadrant). Symantec has bought Clearwell. Epiq Systems had just increased its size and its range by the acquisition of Encore eDiscovery Solutions, extending both its software and its services portfolio, and has since added De Novo Legal which combines processing, hosting and review services.

Setting the scene after LegalTech 2012

Well, who would have thought that the big topic of conversation at LegalTech would be the weather? Keen though I am to import British ideas into US eDiscovery, the near-obsessive British focus on temperature and precipitation can stay at home. The subject came up thanks to the contrast between the balminess of this New York January compared with last year, when we needed snowshoes and crampons to cross 6th Avenue. Getting back to the UK was a different matter weather-wise, but we will come back to that.

The other generic ice-breaker at LegalTech is “Have you seen anything new here?”. None of us can actually remember ever seeing anything truly “new” at LegalTech, at least by the standards of an industry which produces ever more interesting and sophisticated technology throughout each year. The bar is set very high, and the question is the industry equivalent of the conventional enquiry after one’s health.

The problem – my particular problem, anyway – is illustrated by the legal IT PR who wrote to me as the show closed to ensure that I had all the information I needed for the article I might write about her client. What do you suggest I do, lady? Write about everything? Type out a big list of all the companies and people I saw and call it an article? Pick out some and ignore others on some subjective or arbitrary basis? I did in fact write about some of the new developments before LegalTech, mainly on my Google Plus site, and will pick up some more in due course, mainly by pointers to good summaries by others. My main purpose in going to LegalTech, apart from participation in a couple of panels, is to meet people.

At a conference last year, I overheard one person asking another about the best way to meet people at conferences. The answer given was “Follow Chris Dale around”. That is more than a little exaggerated, but I pass it on because its implication broadly defines what I do in between the formal events – I meet up with people, largely by serendipity, and find out far more than I would in the (necessarily fewer) formal meetings which require fixed time slots. As I say, I will point you in due course to some of the more structured accounts of LegalTech 2012, but for now I merely invite you to “follow me around” on what is largely a personal account of the show, though by no means a comprehensive one. This article is general in nature; I will write separately about the panels and other structured elements of the show.