Only God can save you now, James. Not sure if he's interested, though.
It might have seemed impossible, but things have gotten worse for those involved in the News of the World phone hacking scandal.
In addition to all the other evidence against the now defunct newspaper, which was run by James Murdoch, the son of everyone’s favorite terrifying Australian media baron, new email evidence — that investigators literally pulled out of a box in an abandoned office — indicates that the younger Murdoch should have known exactly what was going on.
This isn’t a smoking gun e-mail. It’s a smoking gun, fingerprints, and well-fit glove…
Continue reading “Judge’s Turn To Hate On News Of The World”
* The fact that this guy got so drunk off of beer pong means he’s probably the best pong competitor who has ever lived. [New York Post]
* This is the best document review job ever. I’m not joking. Does $85/hour sound like a joke? You might need to learn Japanese, though. [Constitutional Daily]
* I wonder how this will affect the inevitable occasions on which I accidentally post drunken political rants on Above the Law’s Twitter feed. [Corporate Counsel]
* New York Times reporter David Segal has made major waves for criticizing law schools. Can other people make waves for criticizing David Segal? [Blueprint LSAT Preparation]
* Lat was on Minnesota Public Radio today giving a measured defense of unpaid internships. Kids at my high school were unpaid interns all the time. It was no big deal. (By the way, ATL is seeking a paid intern.) [Minnesota Public Radio]
* Baker Botts just elected a new managing partner. Congratulations to Andrew M. Baker! [Tex Parte Blog]
* Earlier today, the internet temporarily exploded when the Ninth Circuit issued its opinion declaring Prop 8 unconstitutional. Here are comments from David Boies and Ted Olson, the lawyer heavyweights who argued the case. [Metro Weekly]
I don’t always cover electronic discovery, but when I do, I prefer juicy court decisions.
And that’s what we have today. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York released a blunt, controversial ruling last week, slamming down accounting firm KPMG for requesting a less intense preservation obligation. The case has unsettling implications for attorneys and corporations who have big hopes in the future of less costly and less invasive e-discovery standards.
The case has been causing headaches for some time now….
Continue reading “KPMG Recieves an E-Discovery Smackdown”
LegalTech New York finished up earlier this week. I survived with only a minor case of technology loop, although my iPhone was begging for mercy by the end.
The conference was frenetic, to say the least. There was a lot going on, regarding a cornucopia of technological topics and tools to help lawyers. As expected, the biggest hype revolved around predictive coding and computer-assisted review.
The legal technology world has been buzzing about this stuff for a while now, and we have covered it on these pages several times before. (Here and here, for starters). At the conference, attendees got to hear from the naysayers, the enthusiasts, and everyone in between. Several panels helped explain exactly what the technology means on a practical level. And no, cyborgs will not be stealing all the contract attorney jobs any time soon.
One of this week’s highlights was a lunchtime panel featuring two prominent attorneys and a New York magistrate judge. The discussion helped clarify, demystify, and define the terms that have been making headlines (even in the New York Times) for a good part of the past year. Is computer-assisted review as scary as it seems? Of course not.
Let’s see what the panelists — and at least one irate audience member — had to say….
Continue reading “Live at LegalTech: That’s a Wrap, But the Predictive Coding Debate Is Only Heating up”
Judge Andrew Peck
Keyword searching is absolutely terrible, in terms of statistical responsiveness.
– Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck (S.D.N.Y.), in a panel today at the LegalTech conference. He spoke alongside Wachtell Lipton counsel Maura Grossman and Jackson Lewis partner Ralph Losey, on a panel that aimed to demystify cutting-edge, computer-assisted e-discovery technology. Peck is a vocal proponent of computer-assisted discovery and predictive coding. He is not a fan of the slightly older keyword-searching technology.
(A few minutes later, Losey had another strong opinion to add. See what was said, after the jump.)
Continue reading “Quote of the Day: Keyword Searching? You’re Doing It Wrong”
Anyone who works with e-discovery has no doubt encountered the bewildering array of vendors and service providers clamoring for legal technology business. It can be confusing.
As the e-discovery industry has exploded, vendors’ roles have expanded and changed as well. Just a few years ago, it was more common for attorneys and their firms to have to piece together several vendors to form a cohesive e-discovery attack plan. These days, many service providers offer more start-to-finish options.
Even though it is all very technical, vendor work sometimes walks the line between IT work and actual lawyering. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has become wary of discovery vendors that might offer misleading advertisements about their legal certifications. Last week the Court’s Committee for the Unauthorized Practice of Law (sounds intimidating!) delivered an opinion clarifying some rules relevant to discovery vendors.
While they were at it, the committee delivered a couple solid kidney shots. Ouch….
Continue reading “Why Is the D.C. Court of Appeals Feeling Testy Toward E-Discovery Vendors?”
You made a fool of me… and got me in huge trouble with the feds.
For a long time, I have been a staunch advocate of putting passwords on all electronic devices — laptops, phones, tablets, etc. There’s no reason to leave your private life or sensitive business data accessible to any schmo who might have access to your phone, just because you’re too lazy to spend three seconds typing in a password. This is especially true for lawyers, given the client confidences that they handle.
At least personally, however, I’m more lax about sharing some access passwords with close friends or family. My girlfriend knows my iPhone and computer passwords. (I know hers too.) Usually I don’t stress about potentially catastrophic consequences of her knowing that information. But every once in awhile I read something that makes me seriously wonder if you can trust anybody.
My current crisis of trust arises from the prosecution of a man accused of conspiring to export millions of dollars of electronic equipment from the U.S. to Iran. Prosecutors found “incredibly blatant admissions of criminal wrongdoing and philandering” on the defendant’s iPhone. But the man says his wife — who he is currently trying to divorce — stole the phone and forged the incriminating evidence.
Talk about emasculating. Let’s read more about this not-so-happy couple.…
Continue reading “This Might Be the Most Tumultuous Divorce of All Time”
There is a lot of talk these days about the impossibly high costs and absurd amounts of time attorneys spend on e-discovery. Everyone is looking for the best way to make the process more efficient and less time-consuming.
So it is reassuring when a federal judge recognizes that need, and does his part to eliminate careless document review agreements.
Earlier this month, a New Jersey District Judge wrote just that sort of opinion. The savvy judge seems to have his priorities straight….
Continue reading “Judge Agrees That Reviewing 65 Million Documents Is Ridiculous”
Have you been searching for a way to resolve your in-house e-discovery matters? Are you hoping to find the latest document review solution? Is early case assessment a problem in your office? Thanks to the introduction of the Research Corner, Above the Law may be able to assist you with all of these issues.
When you sign up for the Research Corner, you will gain access to white papers, reports, and analysis from leading legal technology companies. Some of the exciting topics in the Research Corner include:
- Datacert: Customer Success Story – Walmart
- Dell DX & Symantec Solution Brief: Store, Manage, and Discover Critical Business Information with a Complete Archiving Solution
- FTI Consulting: The End of Piecemealing: Improving All-in-One Document Review Offerings
- Guidance Software: Choosing the Right In-House Electronic Discovery Solution for Your Organization
- Mitratech: Technology Platform for Legal Department
- Nuix: A Step-by-Step Guide to Early Case Assessment (ECA)
- TCDI: Concept Technology for Streamlining Document Review
What are you waiting for? Sign up for the Research Corner today by clicking here.
Did you know that Above the Law has introduced a Research Corner to the site? In the Research Corner, readers will be able to sign up and obtain access to white papers, reports, and analysis from leading legal technology companies. From resolving in-house e-discovery matters, to comprehensive document review solutions, the Research Corner has something for everyone.
Some of the exciting topics in the Research Corner include:
- Datacert: Customer Success Story – Walmart
- Dell DX & Symantec Solution Brief: Store, Manage, and Discover Critical Business Information with a Complete Archiving Solution
- FTI Consulting: The End of Piecemealing: Improving All-in-One Document Review Offerings
- Guidance Software: Choosing the Right In-House Electronic Discovery Solution for Your Organization
- Mitratech: Technology Platform for Legal Department
- TCDI: Concept Technology for Streamlining Document Review
What are you waiting for? Sign up for the Research Corner today by clicking here.
Did you know that Above the Law has introduced a Research Corner to the site? In the Research Corner, readers will be able to sign up and obtain access to white papers, reports, and analysis from leading legal technology companies. From resolving in-house e-discovery matters, to comprehensive document review solutions, the Research Corner has something for everyone.
Some of the exciting topics in the Research Corner include:
- Datacert: Customer Success Story – Walmart
- Dell DX & Symantec Solution Brief: Store, Manage, and Discover Critical Business Information with a Complete Archiving Solution
- FTI Consulting: The End of Piecemealing: Improving All-in-One Document Review Offerings
- Guidance Software: Choosing the Right In-House Electronic Discovery Solution for Your Organization
- Mitratech: Technology Platform for Legal Department
- TCDI: Concept Technology for Streamlining Document Review
What are you waiting for? Sign up for the Research Corner today by clicking here.
Did you know that Above the Law has introduced a Research Corner to the site? In the Research Corner, readers will be able to sign up and obtain access to white papers, reports, and analysis from leading legal technology companies. From resolving in-house e-discovery matters, to comprehensive document review solutions, the Research Corner has something for everyone.
Some of the exciting topics in the Research Corner include:
- Datacert: Customer Success Story – Walmart
- Dell DX & Symantec Solution Brief: Store, Manage, and Discover Critical Business Information with a Complete Archiving Solution
- FTI Consulting: The End of Piecemealing: Improving All-in-One Document Review Offerings
- Guidance Software: Choosing the Right In-House Electronic Discovery Solution for Your Organization
- Mitratech: Technology Platform for Legal Department
- TCDI: Concept Technology for Streamlining Document Review
What are you waiting for? Sign up for the Research Corner today by clicking here.
Last week, more than a dozen high-profile mass torts attorneys lost a San Francisco jury trial against a small technology company. The jury decided the attorneys had illegally breached a document review contract during the high-profile Chinese drywall class-action litigation.
On September 19, the 14 defendants in Cataphora Inc. v Parker were ordered to pay $317,113 to the technology company in lost profits, plus attorneys’ fees.
“These guys are the worst of hypocrites that you can possibly find,” said Roger Chadderdon, technology counsel at Cataphora. “They claim to be trying to help the little guy, but what they’re doing is trying to put more money in their own pockets. Everybody knows that, but this is a case that illustrates it beyond what I have ever seen.”
Clearly, tempers are still running hot. We’ve got more from both sides of the dispute, and a quick refresher on Chinese drywall, after the jump….
Continue reading “Prominent Plaintiffs’ Attorneys Ordered to Pay Up After Losing Breach of Contract Trial”
At this point, the lengths companies go to in order to protect data, keep it secure, and prepare for e-discovery is old news. Data breaches — and the news coverage that usually follows — have frightened many companies into at least attempting to ratchet up data security policies. Likewise with retention practices. There have been enough e-discovery horror stories that most companies, and especially their lawyers, know they need to start prioritizing this stuff.
Strangely though, you don’t often hear much about data security within corporate boards. But it turns out that the boards of many multinational corporations with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue are way, way behind the curve on data security.
Company boards are doing everything from printing out physical copies of thousands of pages of sensitive material, to sending unencrypted information to personal e-mail accounts, unsecured iPhones, and home computers. The Thomson Reuters report, released Wednesday, gives a harrowing account of disasters waiting to happen….
Continue reading “Many Corporate Boards Are Pretty Much Waiting to Get Hacked, Report Says”
Adam Bier (sans beard)
At the Legal Technology Leadership Summit opening reception on Tuesday, I struck up a conversation with a friendly young lawyer. He won immediate social coolness points for several reasons: He has a beard. He’s from the East Bay, like me. He runs a solo practice, and he had some good stories about lawyers following unique, non-lawyerly paths (which we might mention in future posts).
Needless to say, I was surprised to walk into Thursday’s keynote discussion, “Qualcomm Revisited: When Lawyers Face Discovery Sanctions,” and discover that this attorney was actually the youngest member of the Qualcomm Six.
Adam Bier was still a self-described “baby lawyer” when he was wrongfully sanctioned in the landmark 2008 Qualcomm e-discovery case. Kashmir Hill interviewed him early last year, when the appealed sanctions were finally vacated, more than two years after they were first imposed. Bier shared his story with conference attendees, joined onstage by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Waxse and Frank Cialone of Shartsis Friese, who defended several of the outside counsel in Qualcomm.
After the jump, learn the details of Bier’s nightmare experience. Can you imagine yourself in his shoes?
Continue reading “Dispatch from Amelia Island: When Clients Attack”
When you’re in private practice, people ask you tough questions. “During the proxy fight, a trial court held that our proxy statement was false and misleading. We settled that case, so that judgment is final. We’ve now been hit with a 10b-5 shareholder suit, and the plaintiffs have filed a motion saying that the earlier proxy decision is binding on the question whether our statements were false and misleading. How do we defeat that motion?”
Then you move in-house, and the question changes: “How can we reduce the cost of electronic discovery and document review?”
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
But, when you’re forced to think for a minute about electronic discovery and document review, you realize that the battle previously waged between law firms and third-party vendors to capture this work is now largely over: Document review, which was historically an important profit center for large law firms, has moved permanently into the hands of third-party vendors. That sea change was not prompted by the recession, and things are not going to return to the old “normal” after the economy recovers. Companies that continue to rely on law firms, rather than third-party vendors, to do large document reviews are probably making a mistake, and law firms that are counting on document review projects to resuscitate their profitability are betting on the wrong horse.
Why?
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Why Vendors Win The Document Review Work”
A wise man once said: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”
I think of this whenever there are claims of attorneys royally screwing up e-discovery. It’s easy to indulge in some schadenfreude and say, “What suckers!” But truthfully, many firms — even the big, prestigious ones — are more vulnerable than they’d like to admit.
This month, McDermott Will & Emery ended up in the bright, unpleasant spotlight, because a former client sued the firm for malpractice.
Why, you might ask? The firm allegedly botched a client’s e-discovery.
Keep reading to see how the Am Law 100 firm became the e-discovery dunce du jour….
Continue reading “McDermott Will & Emery Wins E-discovery Blunder of the Week”
* “I doubt this is constitutional, but let’s just do it.” Sounds like business as usual down in the Senate as to plans to extend the FBI Director’s term. [Blog of Legal Times]
* Are we really still talking about desegregating schools in Arkansas? I can’t even believe that this is a serious proposition. [WSJ Law Blog]
* This is what happens when lawyers from Yale stop being polite, and start getting real. What good can come from Kentucky or North Dakota? [PrawfsBlog]
* Ladies, should you take a new job while pregnant? To me, that’s kind of like asking, “Should I go bungee jumping while pregnant?” Not a good idea. [Corporette]
* Apparently, there’s some debate as to which city will be the next world capital of law. And no, it probably isn’t going to be one of these outsourcing cities. [Law21]
* Kash, of course it’s bad for America that Weiner is resigning. We don’t get to see any more big, kosher pickles. [The Not-So Private Parts / Forbes]
* Summer associates, please take note. Do not send emails to colleagues about wild, underage ragers like this JP Morgan intern did. You will look like a complete tool. [Dealbreaker]
* Leave it to Paul Clement to get this lady off with a 9-0 decision. It turns out she wasn’t a terrorist, just a little kooky. [CNN Justice]
* Bob Tennant of Recommind tells patent critics (and competitors) a thing or two about prior art and automated discovery. [Recommind]
I’ve always wondered what kind of salary contract lawyers make these days. Okay, not really, I kind of already know, because a lot of my friends are contract lawyers. But for those of you who aren’t familiar with the wonderful world of contract lawyering, the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article yesterday, by Vanessa O’Connell, on the trials and tribulations of these lawyers-for-hire.
The Journal editors decided to give the piece a cutesy title by using a play on words: “Lawyers settle… for temp jobs.” Lawyers are supposed to be settling cases, and now they’re settling for temporary jobs. Oh, that’s so very witty.
What the WSJ folks might not have realized is that when you’re an unemployed new lawyer in this kind of economy, or even if you’re an older one, you don’t really have the option of “settling.” It’s depressing, but you kind of just accept the fact that this is the hand that you’ve been dealt.
But maybe there is a bright side to this situation after all. Maybe these contract attorneys are making serious bank in these temporary positions….
Continue reading “How Can a Lawyer ‘Settle’ for the Only Job He Can Get?”
Ed. note: This post is by Will Meyerhofer, a former Sullivan & Cromwell attorney turned psychotherapist. He holds degrees from Harvard, NYU Law, and The Hunter College School of Social Work, and he blogs at The People’s Therapist. His new book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy, is available on Amazon (affiliate link).
My client’s concise estimate of her second year at a big law firm:
“Meh.”
For months, the “career” consisted of one-third idleness, one-third word-processing, and one-third pointless research. That morphed over time into “managing” doc review, which morphed into doing doc review, which translated into odious hours staring at odious documents on a computer and clicking “responsive/relevant” or “privileged” or some euphemism for “embarrassing.” According to rumors at her firm, there’s juicy stuff squirreled away in electronic nooks and crannies – most notoriously, emails from execs’ hiring hookers. To date, my client’s experience of “doing doc review” has matched the edge-of-your-seat excitement of watching drywall compound discharge moisture.
“There are days I want to scream, ‘Who are we fooling?!’” she remonstrated. (Granted, there wasn’t much use remonstrating with me, since I’m her therapist. Sometimes you just need to remonstrate – to demonstrate you can remonstrate.) “This isn’t a career – it isn’t even a job. It’s a joke. Every day I think about quitting.”
But she doesn’t.
Why?
Continue reading “Dancing The Pole”
