Our favorite e-discovery event of the year—Relativity Fest—is coming up October 9-11 in Chicago. Finalizing the content and welcoming new registrants is giving us warm, fuzzy feelings about this industry. e-Discovery is fueled by smart professionals who are eager to keep up with a rapidly changing marketplace and evolving technology, and it’s come a long way since the first Relativity Fest took place back in 2010.
To get some perspective on what this work means to some of its evangelists, we reached out to the Relativity community to get their thoughts. Here’s what we heard.
Rhea Frederick, vice president of business development
“Electronic discovery is an opportunity, a challenge, and a process. It is an opportunity to embrace technology for diligent client representation; a challenge to support the ethical duty of competence; and a process that should involve a triad of professionals from the corporate, law firm, and service provider communities working together toward repeatable and defensible goals.”
Joshua Hummel, chair of the Electronic Discovery Practice Group at Fox Rothschild
“Everyone has a different level of experience and comfort with computer technology and e-discovery, and that’s okay. Wherever you happen to land on the spectrum of e-discovery skill and competency, the most important thing is to respect the importance of electronically stored information and its place in almost every case. We’re in the information age where relevant communications and evidence could be found anywhere—so plan to address that fact in every case, even if you need to enlist help from more experienced peers or consultants who can help you find and gather those stores of information and sift through them more effectively. Much like we are already used to learning and developing strategies about our cases by analyzing pleadings and relevant legal authorities, addressing e-discovery issues thoroughly at the very beginning of each case can help us understand and plan for the needs of the case and avoid any tragic pitfalls.”
Brad Janssen, director of advisory services at CDS
“e-Discovery is a fun and fascinating intersection where the law and technology converge. It involves both the practice and application of law to technology (such as electronic data residing on computers, email, smartphones, and servers) and also involves the application of technology to the legal process and the discovery process (via data analytics, powerful document review platforms, and so on).”
George Socha, litigation managing director at BDO
“By digging into information stored in electronic form, we can learn so much more about our matters than we ever could when we were limited to pulling information off of paper and out of people’s heads. We have a richness of contemporaneous information we could only dream of before; incredible new ways to mix and match ESI that help us flesh out and challenge story lines; and with information born electronically, a wonderful array of analytical possibilities that can help shape case strategy much earlier in the litigation lifecycle. Those who take advantage of these opportunities can build better and more solid cases; identify weaknesses in their own and their opponents’ cases that they might never have previously located; and do so faster than ever. And those who don’t take advantage, well…”
So, what does e-discovery mean to you? Let us know in the comments, or @kCura on Twitter.
