eDiscovery Daily Blog

• February 2, 2011

As noted Monday and yesterday, LegalTech New York 2011 (LTNY) is happening this week and eDiscoveryDaily is here to report about the latest eDiscovery trends being discussed at the show.  The show wraps up today and, by most accounts, the attitude at the show is considerably more upbeat over last year’s show.  Last chance to check out the show if you’re in the New York area!  If you can brave the weather, which hasn’t been THAT bad so far, there are still several sessions (both paid and free) available and over 240 exhibitors providing information on their products and services.

As noted the past two days, we have been interviewing several industry thought leaders to see what they think are the significant trends for 2011 and, which of those are evident at LTNY.  We have conducted several exciting interviews and will announce the series of thought leader interviews after the show and identify when each will be published.  Mark your calendars!

Perform a “find” on today’s LTNY conference schedule for “discovery” and you’ll get 37 hits (short day).  Here are some of today’s sessions in the main conference tracks:

10:30 – 11:45 AM:

Risk & Responsibility vs. Cost Control: Managing eDiscovery's Great Balancing Act

Discusses:

• Framing the legal issues– identifying risks and responsibilities for companies and their counsel
• A case study–quantifying the costs of eDiscovery
• An open discussion regarding cost containment / alternative billing strategies:
• Negotiations with opposing counsel
• Custodian selection
• Data selection
• Culling options
• Screen and produce
• Automated review

Panelists are: Lisa Markey, Vice President, Information Risk Management, Barclays Capital; Stephanie Mendelsohn, Legal Director of Corporate Records & eDiscovery, Genentech and Jessica L. Watts, Discovery Counsel, Hewlett-Packard Company.  Moderator: James K. Wagner, Jr., Co-Founder and CEO, DiscoverReady.

Introduction to ESI Search

Discusses:

• Content vs. Metadata Searching
• Classification of ESI
• Prerequisites for Content Searching
• Extraction of textual content
• Indexing of textual content
• Implementation of Content Searching
• Key considerations and differentiators
• Search Intent
• How does the desired goal of a search influence its implementation?
• When does search have legal implications and when does it not?

Panelists are: Maura R. Grossman, Counsel, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; Gene Eames, Director, Legal Search & Data Analytics, Pfizer and Rich Hoffman, Vice President of Research and Development, Unify Corporation.  Moderator: Rudy Rouhana, Director of Product Marketing, Daegis.

Criminal Investigations: Why the Rules, Risks, and Responsibilities are Different from eDiscovery in Civil Cases

Discusses:

• Unique rules and eDiscovery issues involved in criminal investigations and why you need to be prepared
• Dialog and discussions you need to have with the government at the beginning of and during an investigation
• Production of documents and data to the government
• Practices and procedures in place at the various government agencies

Panelists are: John Haried, Assistant National Discovery Coordinator, Executive Office for United States Attorneys, DOJ; Ross Goldstein, Trial Attorney, Office of Consumer Litigation, Civil Division DOJ and John McEnany, Associate United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office, S.D.N.Y.  Moderator: George Kiersted, President, Kiersted Systems.

1:45 – 3:00 PM:

Top 5 Ethical Concerns for Lawyers in eDiscovery

Discusses:

• Appropriately supervise clients' discovery efforts (including potential conflicts around self collection)
• Avoid conflicts of interest – attorney's and vendor's
• Appropriately supervise document reviewers
• Avoid serving as discovery process 30(b)(6) witness
• Accurately represent clients' data storage paradigm and retrieval/restoration/review expenses

Panelists are: Conor R. Crowley, Partner and Sedona Conference® WG1 Steering Committee, Crowley Law Office; William A. Olshan, Managing Director, Office of the General Counsel, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.; Shannon Capone Kirk, eDiscovery Counsel, Ropes & Gray LLP; and Theresa Beaumont, eDiscovery Counsel, Google.  Moderator: Maureen O'Neill, VP, San Francisco Marketplace Leader, DiscoverReady.

In addition to these, there are other eDiscovery-related sessions today.  For a complete description for all sessions today, click here.

So, what do you think?  What did you think of the show this year?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.