eDiscovery Daily Blog

• September 4, 2015

Just flew back from ILTACON 2015 (and, boy are my arms tired!).  Even though Caesars Palace is not pager friendly, it was a terrific venue for the show again (after having been held there two years ago).  Between various meetings to pay the bills (we all have to), I found time to attend a few sessions.  Here are a few brief observations from the show and sessions.

Innovations

Catch Box: One of the unique innovations for encouraging and managing audience participation was the “catch box” (pictured above), which was a soft box containing a microphone.  You could actually throw it to the next person with a comment and it was soft, yet durable (at least in the sessions that I attended).  I used it myself when presenting at the 20 E-Discovery Warnings session that is described below.  Maybe it will “catch” on for future shows!

ILTACon App: Once again this year, ILTA provided an app that you could download to your iPhone or Android that provided all sorts of information, including maps of the exhibit hall and conference center, an activity feed, agenda for each day with details about the event (including date and time, location, speakers, etc.), details about the speakers and exhibitors, even the ability to look up attendees to see if your colleagues from past shows would be there!  Spiffy!  You could also add agenda items to your own personal agenda so that you would be reminded when those events were coming up.  Two suggestions for improvement: 1) Add the ability to add the agenda item to your Outlook calendar so that you can avoid booking meetings during the sessions that you want to attend and 2) Add a GPS feature to the Maps section so that you can see where you are in relation to where you need to go (I know that’s asking a lot, but it would be really cool.

Kendeo: Outside of the exhibit hall, there was a big board with instructions to read from several thought provoking questions, put your answer on a post-it note and post it on the board.  The artists from Kendeo, a team of talented training consultants, then represented those answers in cartoon form.  Here’s an example below – the cartoons and renderings made for a unique form of interaction!

Sessions

There were several good sessions at this year’s show.  Three sessions that I particularly enjoyed:

Litigation Support Roundtable: Moderated by Joanne Lane of Merck and Stephen Dooley of Sullivan & Cromwell, the session started off with a question asked of attendees (via provided iPads) as to the hot topics in litigation support today.  A majority of the discussion focused around technology and numerous attendees (via the “catch box”) discussed applications that they find useful to perform various litigation support functions – several of which were new to me.  I plan to find out about them and possibly cover several of them here on this blog.  Stay tuned.

To Share Or Not To Share: The Debate Over Disclosure of E-Discovery Protocols: In this session, the panelists (Patrick Oot of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, Julie Richer of American Electric Power, Philip Favro of Recommind and Alex Ponce de Leon of Google) argued mock cases in front of Judge Andrew Peck regarding the requirements for producing parties to share eDiscovery work product.  The cases included fictional names like Griswold LLC and a product liability claim by Coyote against Acme, Inc. (Oot, representing Acme, stated that Coyote was an “idiot” for never using their products right).  The debate and the rulings by Judge Peck were interesting and enlightening to see the factors considered in cases like these.

20 E-Discovery Warnings in 60 Minutes: This was the session in which I, along with nine of my colleagues, presented.  Each of us had two topics and six minutes (three minutes per topic) to cover them.  An excellent idea for covering a lot of best practices quickly (as I understand it, credit Julie Brown from Vorys for the idea).  Moderated by George Socha of Socha Consulting and Michael Boggs of Holland & Hart, the presenters also included Tom Barce of Kroll Ontrack, Douglas Brush of Kraft & Kennedy, Rodney Holaday of Vorys, Janice Jaco of Keesal, Young & Logan, Alex Lubarsky of CPA Global, Hal Marcus of Recommind, Brandon Mount of Accusoft, Scott Zimmerman of Haynes & Boone and Josh Zybershlag of Kroll Ontrack.  Kudos to David Horrigan of kCura for live tweeting during the session – the tweets are summarized here.

So, what do you think?  Did you attend ILTACON this year?  If so, what was your favorite part?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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.