On January 29th, 2013, judges, attorneys and electronic discovery vendors gathered in New York City for the LegalTech Conference to discuss important eDiscovery practices. Law Technology News reported that one topic discussed included cost shifting, and how both plaintiffs and defendants can work together to keep costs down by maintaining a “reasonable dialogue with the other side.” One judge noted that although some attorneys maintain the attitude of non-cooperation, that strategy will cost clients money in the long run.
Magistrate Judge Gregory Peck, a long-time endorser of predictive coding, noted that while issue coding was a hot-button issue for 2012, the newest challenge will be “information governance.” He noted that it would be helpful for defendant corporations to have a system in place that removes the “junk” emails that cost money to code and review. “Get rid of the ‘what time are we going to lunch’ emails that nobody bothers to delete,” he recommended.
Another topic at the conference was the emergence of eDiscovery software. While everyone is asking about it, the conference noted that attorneys are still wary of replacing human reviewers with the latest in software technology. Although it may take time, there is no question that in the modern age of electronic data, where traditional paper documents are swiftly being replaced by bits and bytes, the use of specialized eDiscovery software is critical for purposes of efficiency and cost-savings.