e-Discovery Insights

Did Mikey Like the New, Improved LTWC 2013? Day One...

2013-05-22T13:52:52-07:00

I've just returned from day one of Legaltech West Coast. I'd hoped to attend both days this year because my Calbar LPMT colleague, Andy Serwin, presented the keynote this morning, Alas, it wasn't meant to be...

Leading up to the conference, the meme was that this is the new, improved LTWC with the addition of, "The California Lawyers' Track". Makes sense. Depending on which statistic you consult, approximately 20-25% of the lawyers in the United States reside in California. So, how did all this measure up to their most hard-to-impress critic, Mikey?

(It's me...it's me...I'm talking about ME!)

First of all, it not only makes sense, it's smart. I'm the first one to admit that virtually all of the programs I present contain at least 50% Ethics content - not only because it's great as far as addressing educational issues that attorneys need to know - but also because Calbar has a mandatory requirement that California attorneys attain four hours of specialty credit in Ethics every three years. The specialty credits are notoriously hard to come by and it always results in higher attendance at my events. I'm sure the gurus at LegalTech understand this factoid. They also worked in our other specialty credit requirements: Bias & Substance Abuse. However, three out of the four were presented on the final day (incentive to entice California attendees to stick around for day two, LegalTech? Well played...)

If you attended all specialty sessions over two days, you'd satisfy one-hour Bias, one-hour Substance Abuse and two-hours Ethics. That's four out of a total of six hours required!

Advantage: LegalTech

Ok, great; the potential is there. But none of that matters if the programs aren't substantive. Were they? If you've been reading me for a while, you know I don't dole out compliments much, but I have to say that I found the content of the three sessions I attended to be excellent; and the final session of the day may have been the best I've ever attended at any conference.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get there early enough to see the keynote speaker, D. Casey Flaherty (and I regretted missing him even more after attending his program in the final session of the day - see below), so I started with "A Panel of Experts: A Candid Conversation". Judges Jay Ghandi and Suzanne Segal (no relation) discussed the challenges brought by eDiscovery. If you follow my Twitter feed, you saw the money quote from that session.

Mid-day, I went another direction. Owen Byrd from Lex Machina was presenting on his article, "Moneyball for Lawyers: How Data and Analytics are Transforming the Practice of Law". This was also the title of an article Owen wrote for our LPMT Committee publication, "the Bottom Line", which will be published in a week or two. He showed us how they're using data in whole new ways to give attorneys every advantage in a case.

To end the day, it was back to the judges (or so I thought) with, "Judges' Panel: The Current State of the ED Market". At first, I was disappointed because the "judges'" panel had only one judge, presenting via Skype. That ended up working out just fine. The live panel included one big firm eDiscovery attorney and the aforementioned Casey Flaherty, Corporate Counsel for Kia Motors America. Here's the deal. Mr. Flaherty walked us through the painstaking process he followed to procure the best eDiscovery vendors for Kia that he could find. What did I think? Read my assessment at the LexisNexis "Matters of Practice" Blog.

Well, that's a wrap for this year. See you next year at LTWC 2014!

Where's Perry?

2013-05-17T13:27:01-07:00

My LPMT colleague, Derick Roselli took this cool panorama of our Executive Committee hard at work at our all-hands meeting at the State Bar offices in Los Angeles this past Tuesday. No wonder I never seem to have any time to post!

By the way; I'm in there, somewhere...

Upcoming Presentation: Calbar Solo & Small Firm Summit: "The Mobile Lawyer & Professional Responsibility: Confidentiality in the Digital Age"

2013-04-23T12:30:52-07:00

I didn't intend for this blog to be a billboard for all of my 'stuff', but lacking much time these days, that's what it's been lately. Since I'm already on a roll, I might as well tell you about a new program I'm presenting at the Calbar Solo and Small Firm Summit in Long Beach, California. The Summit runs from June 20 - 22, 2013 and my program (#19) is entitled:

The Mobile Lawyer & Professional Responsibility: Confidentiality in the Digital Age

Friday, June 21, 2013 1:15 p.m.-2:15 p.m.

Lawyers are open for business 24-hours a day. They communicate via Twitter & Facebook, on smartphones, tablets & notebooks – in coffee shops, taxicabs, airports and on airplanes. This program reviews recent COPRAC opinions addressing technology and provides tools to protect confidences and privacy for both attorney and client.

Hope to see you there!

Shameless Plug Alert: The California Guide to Growing & Managing A Law Office

2013-04-11T10:31:57-07:00

I heard rumors that people who preordered the book were starting to receive their copies and now it's official. The book is out. Obviously, you should buy several copies for members of the entire family as holiday gifts. After all, what better time to share the knowledge than on, say, Memorial Day weekend?

But I'm not pushing...not...pushing...

Upcoming Presentation: Metadata - Legal and Ethical Challenges

2013-03-29T13:36:19-07:00

I'm presenting a webinar with my good friend and past-LPMT-Chair Robert Brownstone, entitled:

Metadata: Legal and Ethical Challenges:

Avoiding Information Risks With Various File Types, Electronic Redactions, Location-Tracking, “The Cloud” and eDiscovery.

This is a live, 90-minute CLE webinar/teleconference with interactive Q&A Thursday, May 2nd, 2013 from 1:00pm-2:30pm EDT, 10:00am-11:30am PDT.

And yes, as the subtitle suggests, this is not a 101 presentation. If you're interested in checking it out, click-through to the Strafford web site for more info; and stay tuned. I have many more of these in the pipeline.

The Exchange - San Francisco Wrap-Up

2013-03-29T13:05:27-07:00

Today's General Counsel Institute (Formerly the Executive Counsel Institute) held the San Francisco stop of their "eDiscovery for the Corporate Market" series, nicknamed "The Exchange". Prior to this, I'd only attended in Los Angeles - and only the first day - but I was on a couple of the panels this year, so attended the entire one-and-a-half-day event. The moderators for this location were Browning Marean III, Robert Brownstone and David Kessler.

This format is still working for me, folks. The roundtable approach and ability for all attendees to participate is simply a great way to info-share, and as I've mentioned in prior summaries, the vendor attendees do not overpower the conference with blatant pitches.

Most importantly, I learn something new every single time I attend; and that's the point, isn't it? Let me share with you the sessions that were covered this year:

Polling the audience (Pain points, role, expected outcomes)
Data security, social media and the cloud (with a healthy portion of BYOD included)
Dealing with challenges of legal holds
Recognize/reconcile the ethical and contractual tensions that can arise between I/C, O/C and providers
Importance of day-to-day processes, management skills, swimming upstream, info management and governance
Effective and efficient project management
Recalibrating the program - unaddressed issues
Resources and tools
Search technologies and forward thinking

And most importantly, several coffee breaks...

Every flavor of eDiscovery professional is represented at these conferences, from lawyers to techies to support staff; and each brings to the (round)table their real-world perspective of what they see on a daily basis. Practical information, not theory!

I encourage you to check it out the next time the conference is in your area.

Int-Elect Required to Defeat Cyberattacks on Voting

2013-03-18T12:03:53-07:00

Sometimes, it's not easy thinking about disaster-planning all of the time. Not incorporating enough caution means you get it wrong and somebody will be angry with you. Incorporate too much caution and everyone thinks you're paranoid (insert usual joke here about you all watching me...).

So, how alarmed should we be to hear about the first documented case of a cyberattack on a U.S. election? If you're in disaster-planning, you would have been concerned about it years ago, prior to election functions like registration migrating to the 'Net and voting machines using touchscreens and tabulating via software. And to think; recently 'they' were suggesting voting by email...

I can't think of anything more critical than preserving the integrity of the electoral process, but here's some food for thought to all of the factions currently bickering over Voter-ID laws:

While you're bickering over how to guard the front-door, perhaps you should send someone 'round back...

ReInventLaw Silicon Valley: GoldenState & the Three Bears

2013-03-11T14:02:11-07:00

What the hell was that???

I'm speaking of the all-day 'experiment' (that's what I'm calling it), ReInventLaw Silicon Valley 2013 conference this past Friday. Is that a criticism? Not at all. This was the kickoff event of a collaborative effort; law students, professors, technologists, investors, inventors, attorneys and everything in-between, all convening in one place (The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, to be exact) to talk about the future direction of law practice. Approximately 40 speakers in all. You read that right; 40 speakers in a single day (enough to make an LPMT Chairman cry).

And what did we see? Good talks, bad talks, decent talks, shameless sales pitches, moderately-shameful sales pitches. Terrible speakers with outstanding messages, outstanding speakers with terrible messages & mediocre speakers with mediocre messages. Speakers who went on too long, speakers who didn't go on long enough and speakers who were juuuust right (yes, this was the LPMT-equivalent of the Three Bears...).

And of course, live streaming Tweets hosted on a PC with an IP-address conflict (DHCP, my friends; old school!). There were funny tweets about there only being five ties in the room (I happened to be one of them). My response was to create the hash tag, #thesmartesttiesintheroom.

In other words, I had a great time! It's very easy to criticize something like this, I suppose, but the organizers were able to land many hard-to-attain speakers while simultaneously coaxing approximately 350 people (by my rough count of how many actually showed up vs. the 500 tickets that were distributed) to convene in one location for a healthy exchange of ideas.

I gotta go...my porridge is getting cold...

LegalTech West Coast 2013 - May 21-22 (#LTWC)

2013-03-07T14:30:47-08:00

Just a quick reminder - LegalTech West Coast 2013

is coming up May 21st & 22nd at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel

in Downtown Los Angeles.

Yahoo! and the Robot (not Remote) Employee

2013-02-27T13:58:11-08:00

Wouldn't the world be a perfect place if we simply followed every talking head who pontificates on a subject (yours truly excluded...)? Of course, the goal doesn't usually involve the content of the story, but to create a bait headline that'll compel a reader to click-through (the shortest way to accomplish this: make them angry). And what a perfect subject to select for this purpose; Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer rescinds remote privileges!

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Then, the experts swoop in to tell us what she's really doing:

Implementing a stealth layoff by pissing-off employees, who will then quit on their own,
Discriminating against working moms (what about dads?),
Taking us back to draconian times!

You get the idea...and you know what? Every one of these claims might be true! But, perhaps she is:

Putting her arms around a human resources issue that's grown out of control,
Fostering improved inter-company relations,
Trying to better-assess a situation she can't see.

Mix & match as you like. Does that mean I support the decision? It's not about that. I, like you, can easily cite detriments as well:

More hours/dollars wasted on fuel, time and wear & tear sitting in traffic (I've been wondering whether the increase in traffic would actually be noticeable to outsiders),
Less quality/leisure time with family, friends or hobbies,
More pressure on significant other/spouse/parent to 'pick up the slack' of the Yahoo! employee (i.e. What I'm getting at is, suppose this particular employee is also a caregiver to an elderly parent; it ain't only about children, is it?)
More pressure on single, unattached employee for similar reasons (there are only so many hours in the day for grocery shopping, errands and of course, appointments).
Don't even get me started on morale...at least in the short term.
Higher costs for Yahoo! as well; supporting all of these additional bodies on-site will have a marked effect on resources, such as electricity, maintenance, space allocation, furniture & supplies, etc.

I hate to quote Facebook, but: It's complicated.

This is why it's extremely difficult to be a manager; too many cooks and Monday-morning quarterbacks. My favorite is the propensity to quote studies about the benefits/detriments of working remotely. You know what? It's irrelevant except as it pertains to Yahoo!! (So, when I want to add a 'bang' to a sentence ending in the word "Yahoo!", is that how I do it?).

Of course, there is a place for statistics and studies as a general guide. But what matters most is, how do these statistics and studies relate to the specific situation at Yahoo!? There are a lot of factors involved, and I don't see too many of these articles wading very far into the weeds.

Last point; substitute any other name for Yahoo! Same rules apply.

P.S. I've included articles from people who do know the subject well - a lot better than I do, anyway (e.g. Richard Branson) but I think his particular comments answer his own concerns:

"To successfully work with other people, you have to trust each other. A big part of this is trusting people to get their work done wherever they are, without supervision." [Italics added].

Two questions:

Is it possible that Yahoo! harbors irrational mistrust of their employees?
Is it possible that some employees have abused Yahoo!'s trust?

It could be one, both or neither. I wonder how this will play out in the months leading up to implementation? I wonder what things will look like six months after implementation?