Words from the Digital WarRoom

Two recent events have brought a new focus on predictive coding and it's use in electronic discovery matters. The first was an order from Judge Robert Miller Jr., of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana on April 6^th in the case of In Re: Biomet M2a Magnum Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation (MDL 2391). That order has been referred to in numerous headlines as an endorsement of predictive coding. As an example Law Technology News asserted that “Indiana Federal Court OKs Jump-Start on Predictive Coding” and the ABA Journal went so far as to say that “Judge OKs Use of Predictive Coding to Cut E-Discovery Document Review Group from 2 Million to 5,000”.

The uproar over predictive coding following the recent order by Judge Miller in the BioMet case ( In Re: Biomet M2a Magnum Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation (MDL 2391), has prompted a real focus on both the products (more on that in a subsequent post) and the process used in that case. The latter of course has always seemed to me far more important than the former and by coincidence a separate blog post brought that point home once again this week.

How can you be in two places at the same time?   Last week Browning Marean and Tom O'Connor, Senior GGO EDiscovery consultant, along with Bruce Olson, founder and president of ONLAW Trial Technologies, faced this dilemna when they were all speaking on Thursday and Friday at the ABA TechShow in Chicago but scheduled to do the opening keynote session on Thursday at the University of Florida Levin College of Law/ EDRM two-day event, "E-Discovery for the Small and Medium Case."  (Bruce and Tom of course are the authors of Electronic Discovery for Small Cases: Managing Digital Evidence and ESI, published by the ABA's Law Practice Management section.)

GGO, creators of the Digital WarRoom platform for accessible, affordable e-discovery, will have a major presence at the ABA TechShow this week at the Chicago Hilton.

Ediscovery RedZone regulars Browning Marean and Tom O’Connor speak with EDRM co-founder George Socha about the upcoming conference “EDiscovery Skills for Medium and Small Cases” at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. George describes how the groundbreaking 1 ½ day conference, co-sponsored by EDRM and the International Center for Automated Research (ICAIR) at Levin College of Law, will be both live and streamed on line, offered at an extremely low price and feature practical “how to” demos of ED software.

GGO will participate in a first-of-its-kind e-discovery conference in Gainesville Florida, sponsored by the University Of Florida Levin College Of Law and the Electronic Discovery Reference Model. The Electronic Discovery for Small and Medium Cases conference will be held on April 4-5, 2013 at the UF Law campus and will also be available as a live, online stream. GGO E-discovery experts Tom O’Connor and Barry O’Melia will join a faculty roster of legal and technical experts, conducting interactive sessions on all aspects of e-discovery. The course will provide attendees with practical knowledge on how to competently and cost-effectively handle e-discovery in small and medium cases, and will shed light on the latest developments in Florida and federal e-discovery rules. The conference also will feature demonstrations of the latest e-discovery software and tools for each phase of the e-discovery process.

 Every year in June, we start hurricane season down in the Gulf states. But in the legal community, March is the beginning of legal technology season. This week in the EDiscovery Red Zone, Tom O'Connor of GGO and Browning Marean, Senior Counsel at DLA Piper, talk about the upcoming shows and what you can expect to see at the them.

So several years ago my good friend Browning Marean and I decided to take the phone calls we had 2 or 3 times a week during his morning commute into the San Diego office of DLA Piper and share them with the rest of the world. We really thought we were that smart. Or funny. Or something.

I returned home from LegalTech New York last Friday and took a couple of days to collect my thoughts about the show. OK that’s not completely accurate: I did mention to squeeze in a few minutes of festivities around a little sporting event we had here in New Orleans over the weekend. 

It’s the beginning of a new year and thus an appropriate time for resolutions. One of mine is to do a little less tweeting and Facebooking and get back to one blog entry a week.  So where to begin? Well, to paraphrase the Red King from Alice in Wonderland, it’s always best to begin at the beginning.  And the beginning for e-discovery is the E.