Our industry’s greatest lessons come from the experience and interaction of folks on the ground—those who execute on e-discovery every day. The slew of top-notch conferences we enjoy each year, such as Legaltech, ILTACON, and Relativity Fest, are the best places to share these lessons. As we begin planning for Relativity Fest 2017, taking place October 22 – 25 in Chicago, we can’t help but reflect on last year’s presentations and share a few of the most memorable ones.
Here are four lessons that carry through 2017.
Lesson #1: Predicting Human Behavior with Analytics Is Closer than We Think
In a time where so much human activity is being documented, analytics technology is predicting consumer purchasing behavior, crime, and more. Inspired by these innovations, Bennett Borden, co-chair of the Information Governance Initiative and chief data scientist of Drinker Biddle & Reath, wanted to see if analytics tools can predict corporate misconduct.
With a New York University graduate program, Bennett looked for certain email behaviors, sifted through messages for high-impact search terms, and conducted a sentiment analysis on email text to evaluate motivation, power, and conflict.
His team used analytics to identify patterns and create an early warning system. In their study, they accurately predicted if an email was related to misconduct about 80 percent of the time. Here’s a 3-minute preview of how they did it:
Watch the full Minority Report: Using Relativity for Predictive Compliance session recording to learn more about Bennett’s experiment as well as the ethical concerns around this approach.
Lesson #2: Know Your Biggest Cyber Threats (and Be Prepared to Investigate)
Because it’s impossible to eliminate cybercrime without eliminating technology (and we all know that’s not going to happen), it’s important to understand the biggest threats and know how to efficiently investigate if a breach occurs.
Ideally, you’ll be able to prevent breaches from occurring, but as explained by Douglas Bloom, director of cybersecurity and forensics at PwC, Anthony Moeller, director of forensic technology at PwC, and kCura’s Doug Kaminski, no matter the reason you’re being targeted, your organization’s vulnerabilities often originate with insiders who handle sensitive data. Watch a two-minute clip from their Relativity Fest session to hear what Douglas Bloom had to say about inside threats:
If you do find yourself facing a breach, e-discovery tools can help mitigate risks and accelerate the investigation. Watch the full e-Discovery in Cyber Investigations session recording to learn more.
Lesson #3: Judges Are Available to Resolve Issues, but They Won’t Dictate Your Discovery
Cristin Traylor, counsel at McGuire Woods, posed a question for the annual judicial panel about how involved judges should be in the e-discovery process. The panel of federal judges reached a consensus on this issue: judges should be involved to help resolve issues as discovery has become more complicated and expensive, but because they don’t have as much information about the case, they shouldn’t micromanage the process.
Judge Rodriguez explained that the purpose of the Rule 16 conference is to resolve discovery issues before they happen. Judge Peck agreed.
The judges went on to discuss how impactful status conferences can be for complicated cases. If there are any issues or discovery has hit a roadblock, both parties can routinely meet with the judge to reduce motion practice and keep the case moving. Hear Judge Fischer’s two-minute recommendation:
Watch the full Judicial Panel recording to hear from Judges Fischer, Peck, Rodriguez, and Waxse about proportionality, data privacy, and more.
Lesson #4: Cross-border Litigation Will Only Get More Complicated
With Brexit and the upcoming effects of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Europe is impacting e-discovery and investigation cases internationally. A panel of global e-discovery professionals weighed the contingencies and discussed notable cases where the parties involved haven’t always seen eye to eye.
One of these cases was Microsoft Corp. v. United States where the United States requested emails from one of Microsoft’s servers in Ireland for a drug trafficking investigation in New York. Microsoft provided account information stored on US servers but refused to hand over the emails stored outside the country. At Relativity Fest, Ed McAndrew, partner at Ballard Spahr, provided his perspective as a former federal cybercrime prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office.
While some argue the ruling depends on the corporation’s headquarters location and others say it’s where the data is physically located, Ed explained how complicated these cross-border issues can be because of the way data is stored. Find out what he had to say in this three-minute clip:
Ed, along with Chris Dale, founder of the eDisclosure Information Project, Meribeth Banaschik, partner at EY, Patrick Burke, senior counsel at Seyfarth Shaw, and kCura’s David Horrigan covered much more ground during the session. Watch the full Brexit and Beyond: International Issues and Cross-border e-Discovery recording to learn more.
