Technology

Live eDiscovery Education Delivered Straight To Your Desktop

Mark your calendar for March 29th for the UF eDiscovery Conference.

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It isn’t often that you can have many of the nation’s legal experts on a topic delivered directly to you via live stream, but that’s exactly what Bill Hamilton and George Socha are doing again this year with the 6th Annual UF Law eDiscovery Conference to be held on Thursday, March 29th. And for a mere $199 in person or $99 for the live stream, you’ll have a front row seat for the action.

The University of Florida is at the forefront of legal education on these issues, and this Conference is the culmination of eDiscovery Week on campus. The Conference focus this year is on effectively managing the everyday case, with an emphasis on mobile devices and the cloud and how to handle them:

E-discovery and data analytics loom large in all cases as the data explosion expands from office documents to smartphones and cloud storage for everyone.

The average smartphone — your portable computer — contains hundreds of gigabytes of rich and novel data and information there for the taking. E-Discovery in this decade is no longer your grandfather’s e-discovery. However, these exciting new e-discovery tools, new offerings and  new challenges and opportunities are accompanied by increasing demands for e-discovery competence by judicial officials.​​

To say that the list of presenters is an all-star cast is a bit of an understatement, and I’m humbled to be included among them. George Socha, Managing Director at BDO’s Forensic Technology Services practice, is a co-Moderator together with Bill Hamilton, the mastermind of the event, and a former litigator turned professor of electronic discovery, data analytics, and complex litigation at the UF Levin College of Law. Here are just a few of the folks coming together for the event:

  • Craig Ball — eDiscovery Special Master, certified computer forensic examiner, law professor, and electronic evidence expert
  • Kenya Dixon — Assistant Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection’s Department of Litigation Technology and Analysis at the FTC, litigator, and supervisory attorney for eDiscovery
  • Judge Patricia Barksdale — United States Magistrate Judge for the Middle District of Florida
  • John Facciola — Retired Magistrate Judge, adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown Law, and one of the smartest and most practical lawyers you’ll ever meet
  • James Francis IV — Recently (last month!) Retired Magistrate Judge from the SDNY, now Distinguished Lecturer at the CUNY School of Law teaching electronic discovery, and author of the Microsoft decisions just recently heard by the U.S. Supreme Court
  • Tessa Jacob — Founder and Chair of Husch Blackwell’s eDiscovery Solutions Group and practicing litigator for more than 20 years
  • Rose Hunter Jones — Global Director of eDiscovery Project Management and Technology for King and Spaulding
  • Gregory Witczak — Vice President, Global Legal eDiscovery at Deutsche Bank AG
  • Mike Quartararo — Director of Litigation Support Services at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP and the author of Project Management in Electronic Discovery

The complete list of faculty is available here, and it’s a list you’ll want to look at. Hamilton brings together experts from across the country and across client demographics as well — we aren’t talking just about the big matters, but about every size case and level of complexity. The information we are putting together will be practical in nature and tips you can put to use immediately no matter how big or small your case.

What’s on the agenda?  Glad you asked. The full agenda is available here. I’ll participate on the morning panel on getting data from the cloud, IoT, and social media together with Craig Ball, Doug Austin of Cloud Nine, and Judge Amanda Arnold Sandstone. Here’s a quick breakdown of what we’ll cover over the day-long session:

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  • eDiscovery Security and Data Protection
  • Getting Critical Information from Cloud, IoT, Social Media, and Smartphones
  • Checking Your Case Story Against Your Case Data
  • Dealing with TAR, Keywords, and AI
  • Tales from the eDiscovery Trenches
  • Human Eyes on Data Review
  • Getting and Escaping Sanctions
  • 2018 Judicial Conference Panel

Last year, we had over 400 people attend online and the feedback from the day was tremendous. Hop on and register, and as a friend of ESI Attorneys, you can use the code ESIAttorneys18 to receive 25% off the conference price. That means you can attend for $75. That’s insane and you shouldn’t pass it up.

The Conference has been approved for 7.5 CLE general credits, 2.0 ethics credits and 3.0 technology credits by the Florida Bar, as well as 7.5 civil trial certification credits AND they will provide certificates of attendance to attendees. With the discount, that’s less than $10 a credit. You get to check off practical knowledge and half your year’s CLE requirements in one day. That calls for a woot woot Pretty Woman style.

In addition to the main event of the Conference, UF is also hosting eDiscovery CareerFest — a program designed to help law students interested in exploring career paths involving electronic discovery and data analytics. Students are encouraged to meet, hang out with, and ask questions of the speakers in town for the Conference with a special reception to follow hosted by our good friends at ACEDS. CareerFest runs Wednesday before the Conference from 3:00 to 5:30 and is free to register. You can sign up here.

As if that isn’t enough, on Friday following the Conference, Hamilton will host the Law School eDiscovery Core Curriculum Consortium. The Consortium is an in-person workshop put on by professors teaching electronic discovery at their respective law schools. You can see the complete list of the Consortium here. Pro tip — It’s an impressive list.

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I’m not going to sugarcoat it — because you know that’s not what I do. You need to stay up to speed on what’s happening in eDiscovery and how you can best represent your clients in this digital age. The UF Conference will spoon feed it to you from the comfort of your desk chair, couch, wherever you want to be. Sign up, use the code, and attend. You’ll be glad you did.

I’ll be there at all three events, so please be sure to say hi if you are in attendance!

Kelly TwiggerKelly Twigger gave up the golden handcuffs of her Biglaw partnership to start ESI Attorneys, an eDiscovery and information law Firm, in 2009. She is passionate about teaching lawyers and legal professionals how to think about and use ESI to win, and does so regularly for her clients. The Wisconsin State Bar named Kelly a Legal Innovator in 2014 for her development of eDiscovery Assistant— an online research and eDiscovery playbook for lawyers and legal professionals. When she’s not thinking, writing or talking about ESI, Kelly is wandering in the mountains of Colorado, or watching Kentucky basketball. You can reach her by email at Kelly@ediscoveryassistant.com or on Twitter: @kellytwigger.

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