eDiscovery Daily Blog
Rest in Peace, Jack Halprin
I was prepared to report some happy news today, as Chris LaCour joined EDRM last week as Director of Business Development. You may know Chris from the eDiscovery retreats that he coordinated over the past few years or his work with ING3NIOUS, which has worked to link a network of providers to the technology decision makers at organizations. Chris will manage the growing line-up of EDRM conferences, events, and eDiscovery education programs and, knowing Chris, will work tirelessly to promote EDRM within our industry. Congrats, Chris!
Unfortunately, with this happy news, I also learned of sad news earlier today. Jack Halprin, head of eDiscovery at Google, passed away on July 2 after a brief battle with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was only 46 years old.
My earliest experience in EDRM was working on the Metrics project with Jack for two years back in 2006 and 2007. While I did not get to know him well, he was a pleasure to work with and we accomplished a lot during those two years early in the history of EDRM. Jack was also one of the original LegalTech thought leader interviews that we did back in 2011, while he was still with Autonomy, and eDiscovery Daily was less than 6 months old.
Greg Buckles at the eDJ Group was the other Metrics team leader (along with Jack) at that time and remarked on the eDJ Blog: “He never let go of that irrepressible intensity, irreverence and honesty that we all brought to our first job” and noted that “the eDiscovery world is a smaller, darker place” without Jack. Indeed.
My best memory of Jack is from one of the EDRM annual meetings. Back then, the team leaders each gave a brief summary of the accomplishments of their team (back then, we called them “working groups”) during the dinner at the conclusion of the first day. The team leader presenting before Jack gave a long-winded, but hilariously funny, speech that had everybody rolling. Most of us figured that would be a tough act to follow. Jack addressed it quickly:
“I would try to compete with that, but I bill by the hour, so…”
Everybody roared with laughter.
Jack was recently in the news regarding a battle over his attempts to evict tenants at a property he purchased, but the Jack I knew was nothing but a pleasure to work with and to know. I will miss him.
If you’d like to remember Jack, memorial donations may be made to the Lymphoma Research Foundation of America.
Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.