EDD Update

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If SharePoint is the Archimedean Point for an organization, then …

Vendors and service providers need to support that point. And that’s just what Kazeon Systems intends to do with eDiscovery SharePoint Manager, which aims to use SharePoint as both an ESI source and target.

On the collection side of e-discovery, SharePoint Manager features forensic collection, data verification and audit, and exception reporting. It also offers in-depth processing for SharePoint data and metadata, with legal hold management and configurable workflow settings. And, there are some vantage points to all the data collected and processed.

SharePoint Manager includes analytics, search, and visualization of SharePoint data to get an early case assessment of a project or investigation. This will help counsel remember “The Gambler” when it comes to assessing litigation: “You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em” and “Know when to walk away and know when to run.” And it can be that easy when you know what’s in your hand.

Historical Supreme Court Nomination

This is an important day in history as we, the people, may see our first female hispanic Supreme Court Justice appointed.  Today, President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayer to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.  Judge Sotomayer is an accomplished woman with degrees from both Princeton and Yale.  She comes from a humble background and was touted as still remembering her roots.  She has been accepted by both Democrats and Republicans as their nominee of choice in the past.  In 1992, she was appointed to the United States District Court for the Southern Discrict of New York by President Bush.  In 1997, she was appointed to the Second Circuit by President Clinton.  My hopes is that everyone will take the time to read more about her.  We all must read her  decisions and not just the ones noted in the news.  I am doing my research now on her opinions and hope to uncover ones that include her viewpoints on eDiscovery.  I will continue to post my findings and hope you will comment here with your personal findings.

Former Judge Hedges Speaking Tomorrow at WiE

I wanted to share with you that former Judge Ron Hedges will be speaking tomorrow at the Women in eDiscovery ("WiE") meeting in NYC.  At the meeting he will be sharing with the members his insight into Cloud Computing and how it effects eDiscovery now and in the future.  The meeting is being hosted by Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP.  Please email newyorkcity@womeninediscovery.com for more details.

The sine qua non for stuff: search

Searching a large body of anything, be it case law or data in response to litigation, requires not only good search tools but a good process to find what is relevant and discard what is not. In regard to searching case law, we know a key skill for lawyers is finding and analogizing cases in legal argumentation. Dr. Adam Wyner discusses the application of natural language processing tools to online bodies of case law for quicker, more cost-effective delivery of accurate analytic search results. And in regard to searching data in response to litigation, TREC 2008 results are out and the tasks for 2009 are in.

Judge Scheindlin & Ralph Losey in a Webinar Tomorrow

Judge Shira Scheindlin and me, Ralph Losey, will be doing a Webinar on e-Discovery Education at 1:00 pm EST tomorrow, March 18. It is dial in only at 724-444-7444; the Show ID is 37210. The interview webinar will then be available for download for many months to come. It is all free of course. Learn about our backgrounds, educational efforts in academia and elsewhere, her new text book, Electronic Discovery and Digital Evidence (West 2009), and mine, Introduction to e-Discovery (ABA 2009) and e-Discovery (ABA 2008). This will be a live, spontaneous interview and should be fun. It will, of course, feature the Judge, whom I am honored to present with. The host is Karl A. Schieneman of JurInnov Ltd. He is just getting started in an e-discovery interview series, but has already interviewed Judge Facciola, Jonathan Redgrave, James Daley,  and Ron Hedges. More good interviews to come, including Craig Ball, Richard Braman, and Sherry Harris, and even one with me alone. Be sure to check these out.

Digital Reef Surfaces

After being in stealth mode for two years, Digital Reef announced its distributed platform to manage unstructured data. In a nutshell, Digital Reef’s technology aims to index, analyze, classify, and manage large volumes to, at once, facilitate e-discovery tasks and help satisfy overall compliance requirements for data retention.

Digital Reef uses a three-tier architecture built on Linux. A Web-based front end orchestrates middleware and back-end processes that include crawlers and a federated index. The index contains metadata and the entire contents of discovered files. The index is based on a proprietary, flat-file system structure that claims to have unique performance optimizations.

Differentiators: Digital Reef’s technology includes a similarity engine that can organize and classify data as well as find content that is similar to documents already found to be relevant to a particular query or litigation. A Linux-based, multi-tier architecture can scale Digital Reef processes independently or in concert using commodity hardware.

Inadvertent Disclosures

We use e-mail to communicate with colleagues, clients, adversaries, friends, courts and even complete strangers. It is so prevalent and accessible that little thought is given to the fact that every message typed creates a permanent record that could be an issue in a legal dispute.

Guidance Grilled Over Absent Memos

Guidance Software bills itself as the leading provider of technology that helps companies dig up old e-mails and other electronic documents that might be evidence in a lawsuit. Yet when Guidance itself had to face a judge, it was accused of bumbling its internal digital search.

EDRM Participation Fee Update

February 11, 2009 - In response to the current economic challenges and the accompanying reduction in electronic discovery personnel at service and software providers, law firms and corporations, for select individuals we are temporarily waiving the individual EDRM participation fee.

This waiver applies to individuals who have lost, or are about to lose, positions in the electronic discovery field.

Individual participants who elect to attend the Spring and Fall EDRM face-to-face working meetings will still be required to pay a fee to cover a portion of meeting expenses.

We know this will not solve everyone’s problems; we hope at least it can ease the pain a little.

Please contact us with any questions.

Thank you,

George Socha and Tom Gelbmann (mail@edrm.net)

Georgetown Law Center’s EDD Training Academy

The waiting is over!  The New York Rangers are the new Stanley Cup Champions!  And this one will last a lifetime!
Wait, wrong celebration :)

But the waiting is over!  After numerous months of meetings, debates, pilots and careful planning it is finally here. The first unbiased, academia based Georgetown Law Center’s week long E-Discovery Training Academy begins Monday.

 The Academy instantly becomes the most credible educational program given Georgetown Law Center's undisputed reputation as the nation's best Law School for Litigators.  Even the economy woes could not stop its momentum.  The academy, limited to 50 seats to assure maximum interaction between the faculty and the students, is completely sold out!

As one of the founding members of the Academy and a faculty member, I am a little biased.  However, few would dispute that finding proper education has always been a great challenge for our industry.  Those of us trying to learn about E-Discovery as well as educate our staff, attorneys and clients are well aware of the complete lack of such initiative despite the great need.   

Until now…

Congratulations to Dean Larry Center, Advisory Committee and Faculty of the Academy for realizing the dream!