The Wednesday keynote presentation was titled “I3: The New Convergence of Intelligence, Intuition and Information” and the panel was Thomson Reuters Chief Strategy Officer David Craig, Malcolm Gladwell (author of recent books concerning intuition “Blink” and “The Tipping Point”) and Dr. Lisa Sanders (a medical columnist for The New York Times whose work was the inspiration for the TV drama “House” – that great show starring Hugh Laurie as the over-the-top doctor who falls back on intuition to make brilliant diagnoses).

The speakers recounted myriad ways in which technology can be used to help supplement the innate decision-making capabilities of experts in their respective fields.

The place was packed.  And Gladwell framed the all-too-familiar lament of e-discovery lawyers perfectly:  “How can we help the decision maker make sense of the morass of information around him?” 

Answer:  begin with law schools.  Students must be trained in ways to sort and analyze the massive amounts of information in systematic ways, much the way even the most experienced pilots still use manuals to guide their flights. 

Most amusing comment:  Thomson Reuters’ David Craig posed the problem for technologists this way: “The biggest technology of the past 10 years is search. Why wasn’t it called find?”   According to Craig, last year there were 2 billion searches performed on Westlaw, a nearly 50 percent increase from the year before.  Their news and financial information system used to hit 250,000 updates per second. It now processes more than a half-million updates per second. 

There are numerous Twitter streams that discuss the presentation.  But there is a great blog post by Jason Wilson which reorganizes various Twitter feeds and puts together the comments made by each panelist by topic, not chronological.  For the post click here. 

We were happy to hear Gladwell mention the “tsunami of information” that exists today – which mirrors our “tsunami of data” series (click here).  The panel’s conclusion?  The only solution to more information spilling forth from technology is the filter of human intuition. Until search engines can filter as well as they can find, they only add to confusion.

Reported by:  Scott Madsen, Esq. / The Posse List Editorial Staff

Deborah Baron (Vice President, Legal & Compliance, Autonomy) moderated the session titled “Taking Compliance and E-discovery to the Cloud”.   (For a video interview of Deborah discussing cloud computing with Ari Kaplan click here).

The panel participants: Jason R. Baron (Director of Litigation, National Archives and Records Administration & Co-Chair, The Sedona Conference Working Group on Electronic Document Retention & Production); Browning E. Marean(Partner, DLA Piper);  Wayne Matus(Partner, Pillsbury);  Karla Wehbe (Senior Information Resource Manager, Risk Management, Bechtel Corporation); and George Tziahanas (Vice President of Compliance, Autonomy). 

What is cloud computing?

When the Internet started it was Web 1.0.   Then the web evolved into what we have today, an interactive platform that is Web 2.0.  You can take information and put it up, or host it,  in the cloud.   “The Cloud” is a euphemism for the Internet.  The Cloud (and the irony is not lost on us) is ethereal and means different things to different people so the panel described in brief the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition (click here for more on NIST).  That full technical definition from NIST is as follows and provides the framework for your further understanding of cloud computing:

Definition of Cloud Computing: 

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models. 

Essential Characteristics:

On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.

Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.

Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.

Measured Service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service. 

Service Models:

Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.

Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls). 

Deployment Models:

Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.

Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load-balancing between clouds).

Overall advantages and issues

The panel delved into the advantages of the cloud, as well as some of the issues: 

Advantages:

Shared resources, information, hardware, software and other resources can be delivered more rapidly and searched.  The cloud is not just for outsourcing, large corporations use the cloud for their data centers combining their local LANs with the cloud to increase capacity, in other words, a hybrid cloud.  This should lead to lower costs for data storage, searching and retrieval.

Issues with the Cloud:

There have also emerged critical yet not fully unexplored issues such as: (1) Preservation, retention and disposal of the data;   (2) Control and Access; (3) Collections and Holds (how do you instigate a litigation hold?  What about metadata?); and (4) Privacy — the use of the data, the location of the data both lead to privacy concerns. 

In evaluating a service agreement for hosting in the cloud,  Wayne Matus offered up some things to include in the terms of service: Use of data, Location of data , Encryption , No change of terms , Destruction, Ownership (assignment), Subpoena , Audit rights.   

On the downside of cloud computing:  security issues.  Wayne Matus mentioned he is involved with a case where there are weekly security breaches and this is “not the best of all possible worlds”.   He also said “There’s someone really smart sitting in Kazakhstan figuring out how to break through it.”  Private clouds were mentioned as one possible solution to the security issue. 

And control, possession and location in the cloud are issues to be looked at as well.  Cloud computing promises a huge liberation of human creativity and communication; but can this precious space for our collaboration be kept open and free?   Cloud computing is bringing with it “cloud capitalism”.  Companies will make money from organising these clouds for us. Apple already is, with its iTunes cloud of music and its cloud of thousands of third-party apps to run on the iPhone. Cloud computing will also bring a kind of cloud culture: increasingly, we will express ourselves through these clouds of films, videos, pictures, books, stories and music. 

Should Lawyers use the Cloud?

Browning Marean said that the genie is out of the bottle.  This is a disruptive technology in that pre-cloud law firms knew where there data was, but now in the cloud — where is your data? A litigation hold is the biggest challenge in the cloud.  Also, in the “pre-cloud” world you knew where (physically) your data was located.  You knew which jurisdiction you were in.  Now, where is the data?   It is important because privacy laws in the US  vs. the EU are different and we have recently seen in several court cases how problematic it becomes.

The Cloud cannot be used as a shield, the data must be accessible.  See Phillip M. Adams & Associates, L.L.C.,  v. Dell, Inc. 2009 WL 910801 (D.Utah March 30, 2009)  (click here).   But just because your client’s data is in the cloud does not mean you don’t have to produce it.  See FRCP 34(a) ii and FRCP 26(a)1(a)(ii).  It appears that when people have to make the decision about retention they go overbroad, creating more ESI, which leads to more e-discovery.  (Which leads to the search for more vendors with culling, filtering, ECA, “predictive coding” capabilities)

An important cloud computing case mentioned by the panel:

Flagg v. City of Detroit, 252 F.R.D. 346 (E.D. Mich. 2008 Access here and commentary here  FRCP 34(a) required production of data in the cloud from text messages sent or received by employees of the City using text messaging devices supplied by SkyTel (for the case click here). 

And also what is being commonly referred to as “Zubulake 6″ or the very recent Pension Committee of the University of Montreal Pension Plan v. Banc of America Securities, LLC,et al., 05 Civ. 9016 (SAS) (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 15, 2010), (click here) although this case seemed to be mentioned in all the sessions.  Members of the panel opined that the case may very well require litigation holds too early and lead to higher costs of litigation.

The Galleon hedge fund case  was mentioned as well which involved insider trading and wiped out a $6 billion dollar fund in a few hours after an indictment was announced.   Audio, texts, email, docs, trade records — all in the cloud and all part of the ediscovery requested by regulators — touched many outside regulated industries and included such giants as IBM, AMP and others. 

Side Bar

Jason R. Baron gave an interesting historical note oon the Oliver North/Iran-Contra episode.  It occurred when government policy was to not use email for official purposes.  He contrasted that later with the Obama administration, which has emphasized transparency and reversed the government agency trend to the point now where the default is for the government is to store more records in the cloud.  Then he gave the “Field of Dreams” scenario:  ”If the CIO builds it, the lawyers will come,” which corroborated what Deborah Baron said earlier, that the legal system is catching up to the increases in technology.

Social Media

Social networking/social media (SM) was discussed as well.   It was mentioned that FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06 recognizes social networking and provides for extended bookkeeping requirements if social media is used for business purposes (note: this is for financial industries, which are heavily regulated).  It was mentioned that SM is an emerging technology and that companies need a SM policy, and they need to enforce it.  Each company is different and has its own culture and should have it’s own unique policy and address what SM is being used for.   Browning Marean said “50 year-olds shouldn’t be setting the policies for the 20 and 30-year-olds of the organization” (although if you work for a start-up that usually is what happens) while earlier Jason R Baron quipped that he made a deal with his daughter that as long as she doesn’t de-friend him on Facebook he won’t de-ATM card her.   Do these two statements attest to the generational gap that exists today in SM use?

For the Powerpoint from the presentation which shows all the subjects discussed click here.

Postscript:

It was a good session, with lots of information.  As cloud computing comes of age, our links to one another will be increasingly routed through a vast shared “cloud” of data and software. These clouds, supported by huge server farms all over the world, will allow us to access data from many devices, not just computers; to use programs only when we need them and to share expensive resources such as servers more efficiently. Instead of linking to one another through a dumb, decentralised network, we will all be linking to and through shared clouds.

The session could not accommodate all issues.  For instance, whose clouds will these be?  Cloud capitalism and cloud culture will not always be in harmony. The best way to understand the coming conflicts over the cloud is to look at the issues already being raised by some of the earliest applications. China, where Google is belatedly standing up for the principles of a cloud free from government interference, is the most immediate example.

But Google also has a more pragmatic, commercial motive. Gmail is a cloud service. Users do not store their messages on their own computers but in a remote cloud run by Google. (The Guardian newspaper recently junked its own, costly email service in favour of Google’s enterprise-level Gmail offering.) If Google cannot maintain the integrity of the Gmail cloud, it does not have a secure service to sell. There will be many battles of this kind in years to come where corporations, citizens and governments struggle for control of the cloud.

An equally significant battle involving Google’s influence over the cloud is being played out in a nondescript courtroom in New York, where the company has been defending its plans, devised with several university libraries, to create a cloud of more than 10m digital books. The question is: on what terms will Google make these available to readers and recompense their authors and publishers?

This shared cultural cloud will come at a price that is difficult to calculate. Google will acquire considerable power over the future of publishing and books – which books to include in the cloud and which not.

This dispute is a template for many others to come. Governments will also have their own views about these clouds, seeing in them threats to national culture (the French response); threats to security (the Chinese response) or threats to competition (the response of the US department of justice).

Thus, just as it is emerging, open cloud culture is threatened on all sides by vested interests of traditional media companies, hungry new monopolists and governments that are intent of reasserting control over the unruly web.

All of this deserves a more detailed examination and it will form the base for the cloud computing vBook The Posse List is writing in collaboration with several e-discovery vendors, law firms and IT experts.  It will be made available for free via our collateral site The Electronic Discovery Reading Room.  Look for our announcement in the coming weeks.  If you’d like information about contributing or being a sponsor, email us at manager@theposselist.com

Reported by The Posse List LegalTech team:  Gregory Bufithis, Christian Aust, Scott Madsen, Alexis Gambetta

Being a native New Yorker now living in Europe, it is always a joy to return to the amazing buzz, the kinetic energy that is New York City.  The seeming cacophony of sounds and actions actually belies one overriding positive fact: “you are in New York and we get things done here”.   A nice separation from that “other” America with its increasingly dysfunctional governmental mechanisms and increasingly rancorous political culture.  And the semi-somnambulant environment of D.C.

So on to LegalTech it was.   So different than last year when the sound system seemed to be playing Chopin’s Funeral March and vendors (and attendees) seemed to move in a catatonic state with slumped shoulders.  This year Jason R Baron and Ralph Losey brought Darude’s Sandstorm  which rocked the crowd (more on their  presentation later in this post).  And those “nurses” handing out invitations to the NextPoint party.  We agree with our colleague Joshua Gilliland (@BowTieLaw on Twitter) that there was more positive buzz, positive energy this year.

We had a chance to catch-up with fellow bloggers/e-discovery analysts such as Fernando Pinguelo and Frank Gonnello, Jr. of E-Lessons Learned, Gabe Acevedo of Gabe’s Guide,  Brett Burney of Burney Consultants, Robert Ambrogi of Law Sites  (and the recently departed éminence grise of Legal Blog Watch)  and  uber blogger/media maven Ari Kaplan of Ari Kaplan Advisors (Ari will be the keynote speaker at ABA TECHSHOW next month and we’ll have a special program for Posse List members from Ari before then).

But the big opportunity at LegalTech is meeting and speaking with the major thought leaders and movers/shakers in the e-discovery/ESI management world.  This year we caught up with Steve Akers, founder of Digital Reef;  Michael Arkfeld of Arkfeld & Associates; Craig Ball of his eponymous firm; Deborah Baron of Autonomy; Jason R Baron of the National Archives; Denise Backhouse of Morgan Lewis;  Kelli Brooks of KPMG Forensics;  Craig Carpenter of Recommind; Steven D’Alencon of CaseCentral; Brandon Daniels of CPA Global; Chris Dale of the e-Disclosure Information Project; Ron Friedmann of Integreon; Laura Kibbe of Epiq Systems; Anne Kershaw of the eDiscovery Institute, Ralph Losey of Ackerman Senterfitt; Mary Mack of Fios; Browning Macrean of DLA Piper; Michelle Mahoney of Mallesons Stephen Jacques;  Wayne Matus of Pillsbury Winthrop; Randi Mayes of ILTA; Nigel Murray of Trilantic; Vince Neicho of Allen& Overy;  Patrick Oot of the eDiscovery Institute, Rob Robinson of Applied Discovery; George Rudoy of Sherman & Sterling;  Warwick Sharp of Equivio; George Socha of Socha Consulting;  John Tredennick of Catalyst; and Karla Wehbe of Bechtel. 

And we also met with a host of other folks like Damien Adams of Data Management Group in Singapore;  Julia Brickell, Sondra Song and Shelley Podolny of H5; Margaret Daley and Erik Laykin of Duff & Phelps; Patrick DiDomenico of Gibbons Law; Kelly Inglese of the Platinum Legal Group in Canada; Dean Kuhlmann of Lateral Data;  Greg O’Reilly and Scott Merrick of LDM Global;  Julian Parker of Stroz Friedberg;  Michael Potters of The Glenmont Group;  Allison Stanfield of e.law in Australia; and Ursula Talley and Ellis Ishaya of StoredIQ. 

Many of these experts have already appeared in our series on e-discovery thought leaders (click here).  The series continues this week and will run several more weeks with all of these folks in the queue to tell their story, give us their opinion.    And you need to meet and speak with all of these people because as our colleague Andy Moore (editorial director of KMWorld) says when it comes to e-discovery “it takes a village”.  There is the science, and there is the art.  The science is in IT’s hands:  the  collection, the preservation, the processing.  The legal team handles the art:  the review, the assessment.  

And as busy as we were at LegalTech we even managed to get ourselves profiled (click here and see page 5). 

The technology?  Boy, was there technology.  We have a special section (link below) to review some of the technology we saw at the show.  We agree with Tamir Sigal who said in his review of LegalTech that “most of the vendors I talked to at the conference blurred the lines between software and services” (click here for his full post).   And everybody said they can do it all:  software, service, in-house, outsourced, whatever.  Even the Green Mountain coffee kiosks on Level 2 had signs “We do ECA, too.”  

But to put all the information and the frenetic pace in perspective we were guided by George Rudoy and Michelle Mahoney who recently said in an article for Law Technology News that “the ‘new normal’ comes with expectations that law firms and vendors will offer creative, innovative offerings, through use of efficient processes and/or automation. Risk is assessed with a finer focus, often resulting in smaller, more agile legal teams being assigned higher risk tasks such as relevance and privilege categorizations, quality assurance, sampling, and review.  This yearning to be agile in delivery, service, and cost containment has fueled the appetite for firms to undertake small to medium-sized EDD processing in house, leaving only the larger projects to the vendors”. 

And that was tempered by George Socha who put it even more succinctly and said (we paraphrase) that you don’t walk into a kitchen and have a single appliance that cooks food, washes dishes, and refrigerates leftovers.  It’s very hard for one company to come up with one set of applications to cover all areas.  Meaning that when they try, you get a Rube Goldberg machine with bits and pieces slapped together in a less-than-seamless manner. 

We have heard it all before:  end-to-end solution.  Can any vendor refute the gap between the marketing and the reality? 

So onward we marched into LegalTech, learning about the migration to cloud computing, more discussion about online repositories, debates on defensible search, overall maturing technologies, the increasingly complex international e-discovery and ….. 

…  information overload.  For although Craig Ball assuaged our concerns by telling us “while we live in an infinite universe it is all manageable”,  we were still a bit numbed by all there was to see and do.  So much to cover, so much information.  I am reminded of Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock (I amold enough to have read it when it was first published in 1970)  wherein he explains the notion of “information overload”.   He spoke of being overwhelmed not by mere sensations — the constant sounds of cars, the mingled smells of multiple sidewalk carts — but by information.  The amount of information we’re given in the modern world can exceed our “channel capacity” and our brain’s processing power.  We become unhinged.  According to Toffler, overload us with information and we won’t be able to make good decisions.  “Sanity itself thus hinges” on avoiding information overload, Toffler warned.  I wonder what he would have made of LegalTech. 

The session tracks were more varied, and much more detailed this year, with a lot of e-discovery education on tap.   And you just cannot cover it all even with a staff of 4.  We covered the keynote speeches and the sessions that we thought would appeal to the majority of our membership/readership:  cloud computing, in-house e-discovery, early case assessment, cross-border international e-discovery, advanced searching, backup and archiving, and document  reviews.  Our coverage breaks out as follows: 

1.  The keynote speech on Wednesday on intelligence, intuition and information was fascinating.  The panel was composed of Malcolm Gladwell, Dr. Lisa Sanders and David Craig.  For our full post click here.

2.  Cloud computing technologies have greatly impacted e-discovery data preservation, collection and processing.  There was a brilliant panel led by Deborah Baron of Autonomy.  For our full post click here.

3.  International e-discovery.  A hot topic all of last year.  Nigel Murray of Trilantic put together a supersession of two panels on the subject.  For our full post click here.

4.    Taking early case assessment in-house is also on the move, and several sessions addressed the issue.  For our full post click here.

5.   Defensible document review.   For our full post click here.

6.   Back-up is for recovery, archiving is for discovery.  We learned the skinny from George Socha and Denise Backhouse.  For our full post click here.

7.   Jason R Baron and Ralph Losey (“The Producers”) presented the Broadway premiere of “E-discovery: Did You Know”.  And also discussed topics in search and retrieval.  For our full post click here. 

8.   And the technology.   We have devoted a separate post to what we saw and thought which you can access by clicking here.

9.  And lastly, something slightly off-topic, NYC being a media capital and all:  the internet, traditional media and social media — and Google.  For our full post click here.

Coming in the next two weeks:  

** Advanced searching, predictive coding, data analytics and statistical methodologies are all gaining traction, a trend we have highlighted in our interview series.   We’ll have an in-depth interview with Anne Kershaw and Patrick Oot of The eDiscovery Institute and explore all of these issues.

**  Asian-based e-discovery has exploded.  There were more Asian e-discovery vendors and Asian language specialists at LegalTech this year than ever before.  The Posse List Asia list has doubled its membership size.  We’ll have a full report including interviews with the major Asian e-discovery vendors and law firms. 

**  E-discovery is moving quite quickly to corporation law departments, but the whole in-house/outside counsel relationship is in flux, too.   One of the most intriguing sessions at LegalTech featured Rob Hellewell, Esq. (Vice President of Electronic Discovery at Applied Discovery) and Brandon Daniels (Vice President, Legal Solutions, at CPA Global) who discussed and demonstrated a new model for managing e-discovery which included a discussion of the “nuts & bolts” of their relationship with Rio Tinto (and other corporations) which usurps the traditional role of outside counsel, and offers a dramatic new use of contract attorneys.  The issues merit a much longer piece and we did not have time to write on all the issues raised.  But both Rob and Brandon have agreed to sit down with us in the coming week for an extensive chat so we’ll post that extended piece shortly.  

**  We’ll have an announcement about our vBook, a collaboration with e-discovery vendors, law firms and IT experts in the cloud computing space.  See post  #2 above.

And I would be remiss if I did not thank my LegalTech reporting team — Christian, Scott and Alexis — for their great job at the show.  And to all The Posse List members at the show who stopped us to say “hi”. 

Gregory P. Bufithis, Esq.   Chairman/Founder   The Posse List 

As many vendors (and participants) told us, last year’s show was indicative of the crashing economy:  low attendance, lackluster enthusiasm.  But this year the number of folks attending seems to be up although according to some of the “veteran vendors” (participants who have done 5+ LegalTech shows) say overall vendor participation seems down. 

But there does seem to be a more positive buzz, positive energy as our colleague Joshua Gilliland (@BowTieLaw on Twitter) told us, and Josh knows this market very well.   There seemed to be a more update feeling about the strength of the e-discovery market. 

The two “big” technology launchs were:

1.  Thomson Reuters Legal’s launch of WestlawNext, the self-proclaimed “next generation in legal research”.  There was a major press conference, and first-class multimedia show which touted “the most comprehensive and expensive R&D project in the company’s legal history”.  We’ll have a more detailed report in our technology wrap-up later this week.

2.  LexisNexis announced their tie-up with Microsoft. Their new offering, LexisNexis for Microsoft Office, aims to “empower lawyers to search and find relevant research in the Office applications they already use”.

InsideLegal (@InsideLegal on Twitter) counted 96 eDiscovery/litigation support vendors present and as they commented — and we agree — everybody’s theme was predictable, up-front, and simple to understand pricing.  We’ll have a more detailed review of the technology at the show in our technology wrap-up later this week which will include 5 minute video “snapshots” of a large number of the vendors.

As regards the sessions, they were more varied and much more detailed this year, with a lot e-discovery education on tap.  The major themes:

1.  E-discovery and governance, risk and compliance have merged, a trend we have reported on in the past.

2.  E-discovery is moving quite quickly to corporation law departments

3.  Advanced searching, predictive coding, data analytics and statistical methodologies are gaining traction, a rend we have highlighted in our interview series (click here).   Later this morning we’ll be posting our interview with Craig Carpenter of Recommind and discuss predictive coding and analytics.

4.  Cloud computing technologies have greatly impacted e-discovery data preservation, collection and processing.

5.  The increased focus on project management and the use of dashboard technologies.

Each of these deserves a longer post and we will do this week and next week in our LegalTech follow-up.

One of the most intriguing was a session sponsored by Applied Discovery and CPA Global which demonstrated a new model for managing e-discovery and discussed the “nuts & bolts” of their relationship with Rio Tinto and other corporations which usurps the traditional role of outside counsel, and offers a dramatic new use of contract attorneys.  We are meeting with CPA Global during LegalTech and we’ll have a more detailed report later.

Now, on to Day 2.

Our team arrived in NYC yesterday for LegalTech New York.  It opens today (February 1st) for 3 days.  It will be held at The Hilton New York (1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York  1-212-586-7000).

The show is presented by ALM Events, a producer of educational and networking events.  And most of us know ALM through its various media outlets/brands:  The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, Law.com, Law Journal Press, The National Law Journal, etc. 

It is the world’s largest legal technology conference and trade show.  Last year the show attracted nearly 13,000 attendees and featured almost 300 exhibiting companies. The 2010 conference will offer more than 60 educational sessions for attendees on topics ranging from electronic discovery and knowledge management to emerging technologies.  

Each day, the sessions are parsed into multiple tracks including: Risk Management, General Counsel, Web 3.0, Intelligence, Knowledge Management, International E-Discovery, ILTA Advanced IT, Comprehensive Recordkeeping, and Emerging Technology.

We’ll be posting some more interviews as part of our series on e-discovery (click here) with folks from Fios, FTI Technology, Recommind, and LDM Global.  We’ll also have a video chat with Jason R Baron and Ralph Losey,  plus Chris Dale.  And we’ll have chats with George Socha and Anne Kershaw and Patrick Oot.  Plus many others.

But there is always much too much to cover in such major events like this, even for a 4-person team.   Yes,we’ll try to cover all the vendors, and all the technology, but we intend to focus our substantive pieces/posts/reporting on:

1.  Developments in predictive coding and  computer assisted document categorization.

2.  Europe and Asia and cross-border e-discovery.

3.  The convergence of intelligence, intuition and information (the subject of Malcolm Gladwll’s keynote presentation on February 3rd.  See below.)

We have covered both LegalTech shows (New York and LA) because our membership base has expanded beyond our core of contract attorneys/temporary attorneys and contract forensics consultants to include paralegals, in-house counsel, law firm attorneys, solo practitioners, e-discovery vendors, legal media, and others. 

If you are contract attorney/temporary attorney or a contract forensics consultant or paralegal, or involved in some aspect of e-discovery work, and you are in NYC next week,  you should go.  No, not necessarily pay the $695 single-day attendance fee if you cannot afford it.  Because a lot of LegalTech events are open to everybody.  

For instance, you can get a pass to attend the Exhibits, the Keynote addresses, the General Sessions, and the Emerging Technologies Tracks & SuperSessions all for free.  Just go to the registration page  (click here)  and you’ll see the box (ok, it’s a circle) to attend those things for $0.0.  

Wny go to the exhibit hall and see vendors?  

1. To learn more about e-discovery technology and the e-discovery industry.
2. For contract attorneys, to meet with vendors who are on the “right-side” (document review and production) of the EDRM like Applied Discovery, CaseCentral, Clearwell Systems, Fios, Trilantic, and many others.  They either have an internal document review/production component or are aligned with partners that do.  As we have said in multiple posts, many vendors now handle all elements of the EDRM (gee,how many times at LegalTech are we going to hear “end-to-end solutions”?)  So check it all out.  All the major players will be in one spot. 
3. If you are a forensics person or otherwise involved in e-discovery work, #2 applies to you, too, since you’ll find a vendors involved in all or part of every aspect of the EDRM.

Take your resume or business card.  Talk to people.  Make a connection.  The appropriate hiring person may not be there (the vendors are trying to sell stuff.  duh.) but ask for an appropriate contact, a person’s name/email.  Collect business cards.  Make something happen.  In the last two years we have met scores of Posse List members at LegalTech and other legal technology conference and trade shows and they were doing just that.  In the past year we have heard from over 300 of our contract attorney/contract paralegal Posse List members tell us they found jobs with vendors — and not just document review.  In data collection and processing, , forensics, product development, project management, etc. 

And some vendors are running special programs, also free.  For instance, CT Summation is running sessions off the Exhibit Hall on Feb 2nd from 9-12.   The Exhibit Hall hours are:

       Monday, February 1st                 10am to 5pm

       Tuesday, February 2nd               10am to 5pm

       Wednesday, February 3rd          10am to 3pm

Want a complete list of the vendors appearing?  Then click here.  You will get a list and a web link to each vendor’s website.   When you get to the Exhibit Hall you will receive a brochure that indicates the booth number of each vendor.

And the vendors will part with a brochure or two so you learn about their products, learn more about e-discovery.  They want to educate.  In our interview series (click here) you will note each vendor tries to educate on various e-discovery issues as well as honk their own horn. 

The series was developed as part of our efforts to provide a voice in the discussion around e-discovery, bringing together interviews, news summaries, and resources.  We do that in addition to providing job and project postings (click here to subscribe to our job lists).

And as we noted, some of the major LegalTech sessions are open to all.  For example: 

Feb 2nd at 9:00am:         Facebook:  Perspectives of Corporate eDiscovery and Social Media presented by:  Mark Howitson, Deputy General Counsel, Facebook

Feb 2^nd at 9:00am:          Epiq Systems SuperSessions on Controlling Discovery Expenses in 2010 (and CLE eligible)

Feb 3rd at 9:00am:           I3:  The Convergence of Intelligence, Intuition and Information presented by Malcolm Gladwell (author of Outliers, Blink ,and The Tipping Point), Dr. Lisa Sanders (New York Times Columnist, Author of Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis), and David Craig (Chief Strategy Officer, Thomson Reuters)

Feb 3^rd starting at 10:30am:    Trilantic’s International SuperSession  regarding international disclosure matters.

There is tons more.  For the full event brochure click here.

And if you can’t make it, we’ll have full coverage through our Twitter posts on our home page, and you can also see them at www.twitter.com/posselist.  We are alo running  a live video stream of certain events on our home page courtsey of Applied Discovery.  And if you have any difficult accessing it you can also go here  you can also access it here: http://www.livestream.com/applieddiscovery .

Hope to see you at LegalTeh.

Day 2 had some interesting events and some interesting technologies on the exhibitor floor so herein our run down.

The Greening Your Career networking breakfast

Day 2 kicked off with a breakfast hosted by Monica Bay (editor of Law Technology News) and featured a panel of experts in an upbeat discussion for members of the legal community who may be looking for jobs.

Monica welcomed all of the jobseekers, speakers, and vendors to the breakfast.  She introduced Chris Braun who announced the launching of a new website for public interest jobs (click here) which is free to both candidates and posters. 

There were 10 tables set up, each for 10 people.  One person at each table was a selected speaker, who spoke to that table with general information and then went around to interact with each person in sequence.  This evolved into a group networking event with exchanging of business cards and some one-on-one conversations.

Integreon’s Babs Deacon (Director of Consulting, Data Analytics) shared her personal story about her own recent job search that lead to her position with Integreon.  It was all about networking networking networking -  something Posse List members have been doing with great success by trolling the vendor shows.

At The Posse List table was Tom Collins, former owner of Juris and author of Mark Rollins and the Rainmaker (a murder mystery) and, of the other nine people, four were actively seeking work, one represented a staffing agency, one authored a legal blog and offered advice, one maintained a massive online legal directory of attorneys and law firms (bigger than Martindale-Hubbell), and one was a techie.

Of note is that one of the job seekers scored with the staffing agency rep at the table and is being considered for a project management position in San Francisco, close to where he lives.  He previously worked for an e-discovery company and had significant review experience, including team leader.  So, with one potential hire at our table, the breakfast worked!

Kudos to Monica Bay for fulfilling a real need.  All the participating job-seekers at the breakfast who were not registered at LegalTech were given comp passes for the day, so they could attend sessions, visit the exhibitors, and network.

Keynote Presentation: Ethics and E-discovery

The keynote presentation was “The Rule of Law in the Wild West: Ethics & E-Discovery” and the panel was composed of Carol Basri (Corporate Lawyering Group LLC and Professor at the University of Pennsylvania), Judge Andrew Peck (U.S. Federal Court, Southern District), Judge Dave Waxse (U.S. Federal District Court, District of Kansas) and Tom Allman (fromr SVP and General Counsel of BASF and an editor of the Sedona Conference Priciples).

Some takeaways from the panel discussion:

         From Carole Basri

         Ethics is the hallmark of our era.  But can we get it together with ethics?  The area of ethics in e-discovery is a   stepchild in the legal profession.

         The Chief Technology Officer is a new and emerging position in companies today.  Among other things the CTO can be someone with custody of the documents who knows how the system works and can archive the relevant documents and show a chain of custody.  We need business people to buy into this.  Critical, confidential, privileged documents cannot just be spread throughout the organization — rather, they need to be disseminated on a need to know basis.

          From Judge Waxse

         You need to have competent people in place.  Lawyers can be held ethically responsible for their employees and third parties (Rule 1 of Code of Professional Conduct) and they cannot say “it’s not my problem”.

         Note:  there are over 14,000 state laws related to record retention.  You need lists of what should be retained and what does not need to be retained.

         It is important for lawyers to get into detail.  Upfront discussion is needed.  And, when you get to court, do not be afraid to tell the court that you don’t know something.         And yes, you always have to look at the economics of the case.  The discovery should be proportional to the value of the case.  It is incumbent on counsel to make a pitch to the court on the value of the case.  Of course, if there is agreement with the other side, the court will not get involved.

       From Judge Peck

        If lawyers are cooperating, there is no problem and the court will not get involved.   Otherwise, if there is spoliation for instance, the court will look to see if there is a good document retention policy and effective training of employees.  It is important to get rid of junk if there is no possibility of litigation.  Use the test of “is litigation reasonably anticipated” for litigation hold purposes.

         We are seeing too many “drive-by” meet and confers.   We strongly urge preparation.  Know your client’s documentation system and come prepared to talk in detail.  Bring the IT folks with you.  It is important to carefully select your custodians — do not go for everyone in a department.  A one time meet and confer does not work — it has to be an iterative process.  Be cooperative.  You can be a vigorous advocate while cooperating with the other side.  Also note that if you fail to produce something, the other side will assume that you must be hiding something.

         Inadvertent production of documents:  this is the responsibility of counsel under the duty of client confidentiality.  However, jurisdictions vary on the duty of counsel to scrub the metadata.  It is best to ask for an agreement and, based on the agreement, get a court order.

       From Tom Allman

       A single retention policy?  What a lot of nonsense.  I completely disagree. It is ludicrous to have a single retention policy.  Instead what is needed is a corporate culture policy.  Have a compliance culture.  Each functional unit needs to make retention decisions for that unit. It is important that compliance (the culture of ethics) is customized.  

       Distinguish between structured and unstructured information.  Where you have problems is with informally produced information, like emails, spreadsheets and .pst files.

       The best thing is to agree on the limits of discovery.  Make a distinction between accessible and inaccessible documents.

Adopting Web 2.0 Technology

There was a great interactive panel on social media (which the Twitter panel should have used, quite frankly) that covered the infamous “Web 2.0″ phrase used so often in legal circles.  The panel addressed the innovations in web technology and what it means for today’s legal practice and how can lawyers take advantage of them.

Our take aways from the session:

Social media in general:  John Lipsey says Ignoring Social Media is not an option.   Law firms/corporations should form social media teams to guide executives on social media policy.  Real time info is direct, frank, immediate and helpful.  Social media doesn’t replace face to face meeting, it’s just the first step now.   Social media is about building relationships.  Blogs and Twitter give you your own media channel,  where everyone has a voice.  Mark Beese discussed the importance of branding.  Using Web 2.0 is important next step in branding.   Many lawyers attending believe that online networks will change the law practice/law business.

Blogging:  if using blog and twitter as professional tool give personal info, but don’t be too personal.  Look for a good platform when setting up a blog.  Be careful when blogging.  Find something no one else is covering, people will want to follow you.  And Give credit where credit is due when blogging.  Don’t use blogging as a personal advertisement, don’t do a ghost writer.  “When blogging be yourself…but don’t be yourself  or be a jerk” D avid Gottlieb suggests.  And accoridng to Mark Beese, Google seems to love blogs.

Twitter:  Twitter as a search technology is an incredible tool: what are they saying about you, your clients, your company.   You don’t have to just follow people you can follow events, client names, conferences and relevant seach terms.    Twitter allows people to get immediate responses back, it’s like face to face, real time web is evolving quickly.  Twitter has changed, will keep changing the way we communicate with each other.

LinkedIn:  LinkedIn groups are a great marketing tool, with a great audience as an opt-in group.  Build your network in LinkedIn,  use recommendations to build credibility,  show personal interest.  Participate in conversations.  It is a social media platform for consistent message.  Multiple channels, building your message over time,  to a highly targeted audience.  It leads to intimacy.

Technologies

There was the usual forest of vendors/technologies at the show but there were a few standouts: 

Fios

Fios unveiled its “Compliant Disposition Methodology” which is designed to meet the challenges of dealing with ESI before litigation through:  (1) assessing what is required; (2) analyzing your existing affairs/policies; (3) establishing a decision framework; (4) building your business case/getting the right staff and technology; and (5) implementing a plan.   For more detail click here. 

      Note:   earlier this month we attended the Sedona conference in Barcelona, Spain which covered all the issues involved in cross-border litigation and international e-discovery.  We had the good fortune to interview Ken Rashbaum, Director of Fios Consulting at Fios, Inc., a recognized expert on all of these issues.   We will post that interview later this week when we publish Part  5 of our Trends series (click here)  when we address working in Europe, an ever expanding market for Posse List members.

Integreon

Integreon demonstrated a new release for its eView platform for hosted document review. The new release builds on the application’s foundation of workflow management and productivity tracking for attorney document review which we saw at LegalTech New York.   The new eView features make e-discovery review and production more efficient and cost-effective, and include:

        • Concept Search to Speed Review: Advanced clustering technologies allow litigation review managers to quickly understand the types of documents in the collection prior to assigning them for review. This can accelerate the review process by excluding non-relevant material altogether (or putting it at the end of the review queue). Users can also highlight a specific document or section of text and, with a single mouse click, immediately identify related documents ranked in order of relevance.

       • Centrally Organize Production Documents: eView improves production management with a central and secure location for organizing production documents. Various different production styles can be managed simultaneously, for example when producing to one or more parties with different requirements for one or more productions. Built-in processes prevent the same document from being produced twice and also reduce the risk of producing privilege documents. Detailed reports make it easy to track all productions. 

       • Save Time Managing Privilege Logs:   It also has the ability to quickly group similar privilege log entries by field and see the quantity of each occurrence. When preparing a final privilege log, bulk find and replace actions can be taken to selectively normalize the values of privilege log fields in order to ensure proper formatting of all entries.  We have not seen this before in a software.

The software is integrated with the Clearwell E-Discovery Platform which is used in-house by many corporations for early case assessment, defensible search, and intelligent culling.  For additional information click here.

Orange Legal Technologies

Orange Legal Technologies is a company we posted about before.  It provides a “one source” series of support services for litigation, audit, and investigation with a focus on the electronic discovery tasks of analytics, processing, and review.   For more click here.

At LTWC it announced the release of the OneO® Data Transport Service – a targeted data transfer service designed to allow users to quickly map and transfer data between disparate electronic discovery applications and services.   We interviewed Ronda Raymond, Vice President of Operations and E-Discovery Solutions, and as she said “one of the biggest challenges in electronic discovery today is the transfer of data between disparate and proprietary electronic discovery services and applications.   Different data formats, languages, and inadequate data transfer schemas all contribute to this challenge”.   So what Orange Technologies aims to accomplish through OneO®Data Transport Service is to see electronic discovery practitioners realize and benefit from the increased flexibility offered by a service that goes beyond the current limited XML-based standards offered today and begin to take advantage of the benefits of newer, more complete offerings.

With the capability to allow data mapping for initial ingestion or transfer from industry acknowledged platforms from providers such as Clearwell Systems and FTI Consulting (Attenex), it looks like the OneO® Data Transport Service provides complete mapping of ESI formats to include text, sound, still and moving images, web archives and generically accepted wrappers and encodings.  And this new service handles foreign languages and includes double-byte character languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean.  As we detailed in our coverage of the ILSL conference this is an important area in the explosion of foreign language reviews (click here).   To lean more about OneO® Data Transport Service click here.

For a nice wrap-up of other vendors check the law.com site Legal Technology by clicking here.

SUMMARY

1.  Our biggest take away from LegalTech West Coast was that the e-discovery vendors and legal technology recruitment managers/staff were very optimistic about an improving economy and many of those we spoke to were looking to hire in the next 3-4 months.   We’ll have a separate report next week on employment opportunities with vendors.

2.  And, yes, attendance was certainly down from the last few years (this was our 3^rd LegalTech West Coast) but there was not the negative buzz we felt at LegalTech New York.  

3.   The buzzword at the show: “pushing left” — the continued push to the left of the EDRM model with more and more emphasis on planning and protocols (Fios, Orange Technologies, Nuix). 

4.  Posse List members need to network network network via social media (or the old fashion “meet and confer”) and make things happen for themselves. 

5.   To get you started on networking, branding, blogging, and raising your profile click here and click here and go to all our helpful links on The Posse Ranch by clicking here.

For our complete coverage of LegalTech West Coast click here.   

Our “Posse List moment”

At the panel entitled “Document Review: Establishing the Team & Utilizing the Technology” Browning Marean, senior counsel in DLA Piper’s San Diego office and a member of the DLA Piper Litigation group and co-chair of the Electronic Discovery Readiness and Response Group (click here) gave us a nice shout out during the session when the panelists were discussing managing document reviews.  He called out “hey, Carl from The Posse List is here and Carl is a document reviewer so let’s hear the Posse List view.”  So we gave our perspective from a reviewer’s point of view and told the session that all reviews were different and so much depended on the associates or team leads who were running them.  We went on to say that the best orientation/training was when the reviewers were provided with more than just a briefing (from a partner or associate) and a binder, but also examples of documents that satisfied different coding tags.  A little later we interjected how important it was for reviewers to get feedback on their coding, and early QC was crucial for detecting if there was any confusion. 

Other members of the panel included Linda Sharp and Bernie Stea from Kroll Ontrack, Ron Best and Phil Nickels from the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olsen, and Joel Vogel from Paul Hasting’s DC Office.   

We had spoken to Browning at a previous break because in one session the panelists were discussing the pros and cons of doing everything in-house versus sending everything out to a vendor which is the Paul Hastings model.  We discussed the Howrey model which is at the other extreme because Howrey has one national center (Falls Church) where all of the document reviews are conducted for all of their offices.  And in between you have firms like Cleary Gottlieb which are somewhat in the middle with several centers in the U.S. and in Europe.

The Litigation Technology Workshops and E-discovery tracks

We fanned out and covered all of the sessions which had titles such as “An Ounce of ESI Preventionis Worth a Pound of ESI Cure” and “eDiscovery Issues and Trends”.  Some notes and observations from these sessions:

1.  One repeated theme from in-house counsel: “we get better e-discovery pricing on data and review from vendors than we do from our outside law firms because these vendors want the corporate client.”  This is a theme we have discussed in many previous Posse List posts and goes to the efforts made by corporate clients to cut costs by “going direct”, by bring initial case assessment and initial review in-house (both covered later today at several sessions), etc.  It is one reason that EDD vendors are “scooping” agencies in staffing projects.

2.  The “Craig Ball mantra” repeated endlessly:  it’s not “e-discovery” anymore. ESI is so prevalent let’s just call it “plain ole discovery”.

3.  Documenting the entire ESI collection process is most important responsibility of litigation support.  It prevents so many problems later on.

4.  Many panelists were in agreement: linear document review is often the safest and most efficient process for most projects and the role of well-trained contract attorneys is critical.  The technology that has developed has made the process shorter, with fewer contract attorneys necessary, but they are still critical.

5.  “Planning ahead” is simply not done but it must be done.  Technology used intelligently to store, archive, and dispose of data can result in 50% e-discovery cost savings downstream.

6.  Early case assessment: the technology keeps getting better and better.  The dominant players in the market: Clearwell, Case Central and Equivio (see separate posting by clicking here).

7.  Another recurring theme at all three sessions:  “best practices”.  We found that the Kroll Ontrack people were a little too idealistic and it was invaluable to have the experience of the practitioners to inject some reality into what happens at reviews.  They were very candid about the shortcoming of attorneys (their lack of education/knowledge in the area of e-discovery and their hesitance to change).   It seems that the most effective catalyst for change is showing the attorneys and clients how much things cost.  This really gets their attention, since the review of documents is one of the most expensive components of litigation, and they are receptive to how savings can be achieved through best practices in early case assessment, effective searching and filtering of the data, proper assembly and training of the review team, and ongoing quality control procedures.  The panels discussed several tools that can be helpful in these areas (ones that produce graphs and spreadsheets for tracking, for example); but they did not endorse any particular applications, maintaining that the needs of every project were different.

Our coverage continues and we’ll have much more during the day and later tonight.

For all our LegalTech West Coast coverage click here.

To follow all those Tweeting from LegalTech West Coast follow on www.tweetdiscovery.com

As we have reported in several posts these last few months, early case assessment (ECA) is the key technology to reducing the cost of e-discovery.  There have been multiple vendors in this space with Clearwell Systems the leader (click here).

Most new ECA platforms have been standalone applications that required users to import and export data depending upon what other eDiscovery technologies that they were utilizing. 

But now we have CaseCentral (click here) stepping to the plate by integrating ECA into their offering and enabling users to now start with ECA and extend through analysis, review, production and post-production re-use, facilitating collaborative assessments of new case merits and liabilities, application of first pass review, and real-time transfer to active review if required, all at a price point that changes the current ECA pricing model.

And in the area of “document relevance” is Equivio which is the hands-down leader in near de-duping and email thread management technology. They have just launched Equivio Relevance^TM which provides:

• Early case assessment: facilitates rapid assessment of the key issues and concepts in a case.
• Culling: ahieves high levels of recall and precision, helping overcome the challenges of over and under-inclusion that characterize traditional keyword methods.
• Review prioritization: By organizing the review set according to relevance rankings, Equivio enables prioritization of document review. This allows attorneys to immediately focus on the most relevant documents.
• Review quality assurance: By identifying discrepancies in the responsiveness designations vis-à-vis the human review team, the application helps find responsive documents missed in the detail review. Similarly, the discrepancies can be used to locate documents incorrectly marked by the human review team as responsive.

We’ll have more on other technologies in another post during LegalTech West Coast.  For our full coverage of LegalTech West Coast click here.

LegalTech West started today in Los Angeles and Steve Harmon, director of legal services at Cisco Systems, discussed the processes and technologies developed by Cisco to support its in-house legal department and outside counsel.  His speech, titled “Maintaining Efficiency, Controls and Quality through Automation”, was all about leveraging technology.

“In this challenging economic environment, it’s more important than ever to properly allocate resources along the ‘core vs. context’ continuum,” said Harmon.  “My goal is to offer insight into the processes we follow at Cisco in making these allocation decisions.”

Harmon manages Cisco’s Legal Technology Solutions team, chartered with developing and maintaining systems and process that support the efficiency and accuracy of all legal functions at Cisco. These systems and processes include contract management, export compliance, regulatory compliance, legal knowledge management, Web-based resources and file room operations.

He also continues to practice law for Cisco as an adjunct member of Cisco’s licensing team where he focuses his practice on intellectual property issues with a specific emphasis on matters including privacy, standards setting organizations and sponsored research programs.

His business development experience includes work as a former member of Cisco’s Strategic Alliances organization where he led the global alliance team responsible for Cisco’s relationship with Hewlett Packard. Prior to joining Cisco, Harmon was director, strategic alliances for Novell and a member of Novell’s Strategic Investments team. He holds a B.S. degree in Business Management (Information Systems emphasis) and a J.D. degree, both from Brigham Young University.

Technology can refine business processes and make business models more efficient. For instance, Cisco Systems is a top provider of IP-related networking equipment, but Cisco doesn’t operate a single manufacturing plant.  Cisco relies on a handful of contract manufacturers for the bulk of its production. A single enterprise extranet connects manufacturers and distributors. By creating electronic links instead of physical ones, Cisco is able to reduce the number of steps necessary to obtain and fulfill customer orders.

Technology can also improve the ability of companies to manage process knowledge. Cisco provides the data collected by its customer service department to equipment designers and manufacturers. Through this process, Cisco’s been able to trouble shoot, identify design and marketing flaws and correct them. “Companies can slice and dice data to create insight,” noted Harmon.

His key point was that we need to eliminate “silo’d sources of information” .  With that structure there is no ability to scale.  What is needed is collaboration.   He pushed a tool that captures emails into a forum.   In the forum, for example, a question can be proposed and answers collected from all the people in the forum.  The question can be stated in such a way that nothing is revealed that is privileged or confidential (commmon legal questions that are non-proprietary).  He specifically  mentioned ORX (On Ramp Exchange) as such a tool.  It provides moderated collaboration and can be a repository for email communications. It eases problems related to storage, retention, and risk management.  Also, it can be internal, with a client, with peer departments, and/or with an outside firm.  There was even a videotaped testimonial from Applied Discovery.

We have been attending all of the Kroll Ontrack Litigation Technology Workshops and the E-Discovery tracks.  We’ll have more to report later tonight and tomorrow.

LegalTech West starts this Wednesday in Los Angeles (click here) and  we will have full coverage.  The Posse List recently hired a Chief Technology Officer who will be covering the event with other Posse List staff and they will be attending a number of the seminars and also trolling the exhibitor center.  We have arranged interviews with a large number of the vendors and seminar participants.

We are also going to mesh our coverage of LegalTech West Coast with Part 4 of our Trends series of the contract attorney market (click here) which covers selected e-discovery and litigation support vendors and opportunities for contract attorneys, including software certification and specialty and getting jobs with e-discovery vendors.   As a number of e-discovery sites have noted, there is a big demand for contract technology workers, including lawyers with e-discovery experience, as freelancers or consultants.

Note to vendors:  if you are going to be at LegalTech West and want to meet with us, please email us at manager@theposselist.com