Turning E-Discovery Concepts Into Practice

Exterro’s Director of E-Discovery Programs, Mike Hamilton, looks at some familiar e-discovery concepts – e.g. “predictive coding,” “collaboration” and “proportionality” – what they mean in practice, and why they should not be allowed to default into the category of “buzz.” He taps a number of experts, including U.S. Magistrate Judge David Waxse; Robert Keeling, co-chair of Sidley Austin’s e-discovery group; and Heidi Gardner, Harvard Law School lecturer and the author of Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos. Judge Waxse identifies collaboration as key in any effort to achieve “just, speedy, and inexpensive” resolution of civil disputes, as called for in the 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and has seen first hand the perils of failure to cooperate. “I still have some cases,” he said, “where lawyers are arguing about what format they should produce in, and spend time fussing about that …”