{"id":11249,"date":"2019-09-27T10:47:50","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T14:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/?p=606368"},"modified":"2019-09-27T10:47:50","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T14:47:50","slug":"if-you-missed-the-fireside-chat-with-judge-andrew-peck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/legal-innovation-center\/2019\/09\/27\/if-you-missed-the-fireside-chat-with-judge-andrew-peck\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Missed The Fireside Chat With Judge Andrew Peck…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Judge Peck<\/p><\/div>\n

Every time I think I have a firm grasp of all that\u2019s happening in the legal technology space, I get invited to an event I didn\u2019t know existed. It makes one question their own relevance.<\/p>\n

C4 Legal (which stands for Cyber for Legal) formed in 2018 as a networking group for service providers in the eDiscovery and legal technology space. Among their objectives is to provide smart legal technology services, and their two primary goals are to provide the market with trusted and proven solutions and deliver meaningful educational content.<\/p>\n

The group invited me to attend their recent breakfast presentation, billed as a fireside chat with retired U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck. Below is my report.<\/p>\n

C4 Legal founder Sal Mancuso from Bluestar Case Solutions<\/a> goes way back in the litigation support industry. \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do with C4 Legal is provide substantial content to the New York legal tech market,\u201d Mancuso told me. \u201cToday, we wanted to provide information that is different from conferences and panel discussions. Judge Peck was an obvious choice because of the impact on eDiscovery and his popularity across the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mancuso and another industry veteran, Ken Krebs from Two Point Consulting<\/a>, joined together with C4 Legal member Jim Corcoran, VP of Business Development at Henderson Legal Services<\/a>, to develop this presentation. It was hosted by Anthony Bracco, the practice leader in Anchin, Block & Anchin, LLP<\/a>\u2019s Litigation, Forensic and Valuation Services Group, and John Imperiale from Anchin\u2019s affiliated partner, CostMarc Consulting Group<\/a>. Also sponsoring were Richard Rodney from iFi, Inc. and Steve Fuller from IPM.<\/p>\n

We started by getting to know the good judge a little better.<\/p>\n

Judge Peck, many readers will recall, recently retired from the bench after 23 years as a U.S. magistrate judge for the Southern District of New York. From the bench, he\u2019s been active from almost day one and his opinions have been quite influential in the eDiscovery industry. He is now Senior Counsel at DLA Piper<\/a>, where he brings his experience to challenges involving information management and eDiscovery. He has worked as special discovery counsel and serves as an arbitrator, mediator, and Special Master.<\/p>\n

What many may not know is that Peck started his legal career in private practice at Paul Weiss in the late 1970s and through the 1980s. In fact, he credits several senior partners at Paul Weiss, who themselves went on to become judges, as mentors. He\u2019s also an avid Sherlock Holmes fan and is a rabid Yankees fan.<\/p>\n

Mancuso asked Judge Peck about a few of his rulings. While most practitioners in the eDiscovery space consider Peck\u2019s 2012 decision in Da Silva Moore v. Publicis Group<\/em> that legitimized the use of technology assisted review tools to be his most influential decision, many do not realize that in 1995, in his very first year as a Magistrate Judge, he ruled in Anti-Monopoly v. Hasbro<\/em> that it is black-letter law that information from a computer is discoverable if it\u2019s relevant.<\/p>\n

Legal technology folks will appreciate that in 1995 floppy disks were still en vogue and the prominent operating system was Windows 3.1. It is actually an understatement to say that Peck\u2019s 1995 decision was groundbreaking.<\/p>\n

Judge Peck feels strongly that law schools need to do better on teaching technology. \u201cMost schools today, if you\u2019re lucky, have one class taught by an adjunct professor that covers eDiscovery. That means about 30 students are learning it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He feels that schools which say “we\u2019re not a trade school — we teach students to think like lawyers and they learn how to practice later” are missing the point. \u201cOne of the hardest things I did as a lawyer was figure out how to draft an answer and a document request. Now schools teach some of that.\u201d His point: eDiscovery should be a larger part of the law school curriculum.<\/p>\n

Peck has famously written wake-up calls for both the bench and bar. In 2009, in his oft-cited opinion in William A. Gross Construction Associates, Inc. v. American Manufacturers Mutual Insurance Co<\/em>., Judge Peck sounded an alarm about the use of keyword search terms and warned parties that they need to cooperate and better plan for discovery.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2017, Peck issued a wake-up call with his decision in Fisher v. Forrest<\/em>. Rule 34 of the FRCP had just been amended to require that parties may no longer use general objections to discovery requests. Litigants had been using meaningless boilerplate objections for years. The revised rule requires that litigants \u201cstate with specificity the grounds for objecting to the request, including the reasons.\u201d Obviously bothered by the inefficiency of boilerplate responses, Judge Peck saw the rule change as an opportunity to alert practitioners that the rules \u201csay what they say and need to be followed.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the things Peck now teaches young associates is to use the word “because” to state specific objections. \u201cInserting this one simple word can mean all the difference,\u201d he says. \u201cObjections to an overly broad discovery request,\u201d he suggests, \u201cshould state that we object \u2018because’<\/em> the contract at issue was signed in 2015 and you\u2019ve asked for documents from 50 years ago. That\u2019s an appropriate objection.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if you really want to hear Judge Peck sound off, ask him about Federal Rule of Evidence 502(d), which he refers to as a \u201cget out of jail free card\u201d for civil litigants. Rule 502(d) of course is the rule related to limiting waiver of privilege in discovery. Judge Peck pretty firmly recommends that every litigant in civil discovery make use of the provisions of 502(d) and obtain a federal court order to protect against inadvertent disclosures.<\/p>\n

Judge Peck does not consider his opinions activist. It\u2019s somewhat subjective, for sure. But he views part of the role of jurists as trying to educate the bar to proper procedures, particularly when it comes to complicated issues like eDiscovery. To his credit, Judge Peck (and other judges, too) have done a great deal to advance the evolution of legal technology.<\/p>\n

Finally, in a round of quick-fire questions, Mancuso asked Judge Peck a few additional questions. Is it time to remove the \u201ce\u201d from eDiscovery? \u201cYes, absolutely.\u201d What would Judge Peck like to tell his 20-year-old self? \u201cDon\u2019t go to law school.\u201d If he could choose another profession, what would it be? \u201cPlaying for the New York Yankees.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know I speak for the folks at C4 Legal and all those who attended this event when I say thank you to Judge Peck for an engaging and enlightening discussion.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Mike Quartararo is the managing director of\u00a0eDPM Advisory Services<\/a>, a consulting firm providing e-discovery, project management and legal technology advisory and training services to the legal industry. He is also the author of the 2016 book\u00a0Project Management in Electronic\u00a0Discovery. Mike has many years of experience delivering e-discovery, project management, and legal technology solutions to law firms and Fortune 500 corporations across the globe and is widely considered an expert on project management, e-discovery and legal matter management. You can reach him via email at\u00a0mquartararo@edpmadvisory.com<\/span><\/a>. Follow him on Twitter @edpmadvisory.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What would Judge Peck like to tell his 20-year-old self? ‘Don\u2019t go to law school.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83740,"featured_media":455146,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3157,11],"tags":[6530,2306,36,6533,3553,7],"class_list":["post-11249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-courts","category-technology","tag-c4-legal","tag-courts","tag-ediscovery","tag-judge-andrew-peck","tag-mike-quartararo","tag-technology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIf You Missed The Fireside Chat With Judge Andrew Peck... - Above The Law's Legal Tech Non-Event<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/legal-innovation-center\/2019\/09\/27\/if-you-missed-the-fireside-chat-with-judge-andrew-peck\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"If You Missed The Fireside Chat With Judge Andrew Peck... - Above The Law's Legal Tech Non-Event\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What would Judge Peck like to tell his 20-year-old self? 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