On the Mark

By Mark V. Reichenbach - October 26, 2007

Good Morning. Let’s start with a Happy Friday.

Yesterday was an interesting day for me.

While road-weary for having done the San Jose, Houston, Newark, (sleep 4 hours) Amtrak Acela to D.C. and then back to Newark schlep, I had an extraordinary experience.

First, the weather was horrible and it caused traffic to act the same. Horribly.

I missed my first train, but counted on my backup, the 8:15 out of Newark (as an old-timer, I always make sure there is a back-up train for just such emergencies). When I went to switch my ticket at the ticket counter, however, I learned the 8:15 was all sold out. Perfect. How could this morning get any better?

“Well we do have a couple of seats left in First Class”  Oh joy. Here comes the hammer. I swallowed hard and asked “How much more is that going to cost?”

“About $130 dollars,” he shot back. I shook my head in disbelief, then nodded in acceptance. This was my back-up train.

Once in my seat, I plugged in the laptop and started reviewing my notes for the BNA Hot Issue Conference I blogged yesterday. At the next stop one of the last remaining seats, immediately next to me, was taken by a gentleman who started to read the NY Times. 

We exchanged pleasantries and after a few minutes I introduced myself. He looked familiar and I asked if we had met before. We hadn’t. Turns out he looked familiar for another reason: He was my Congressman, Vito Fossella of the 13th District here in New York. He’s from Staten Island, I’m Staten Island, go figure!

We spent the next two and a half hours discussing electronic evidence and various legal issues surrounding e-mail, voicemail, plaintiffs bar, litigation reform and life on Staten Island.  Vito Fossella was the man who closed the island’s infamous landfill — “the dump”.  No small feat.

I’m a Democrat and he used to be a Democrat and even though he is now on the Republican side, Congressman Fossella could not have been more gracious, engaging and genuinely interested in topics that my wife and many of my friends would find totally boring. To put it succinctly, he was a gentleman.

Is Congress Doing Enough?   

I was surprised when he asked me that question. We had just spent 15 minutes or so discussing the amendments to the FRCP.

In our E-discovery world we tend to focus on corporate America and the issues as they pertain to it. Speaking with Congressman Fossella, I started to look at how these issues might apply to the small-business owner, the small company –those who don’t have the budget to form E-discovery teams and the like.

I made a mental note to explore that question here On the Mark.

What could Congress do with respect to electronic discovery issues?  I offered to speak with Congressman Fossella’s staff and colleagues about what I know and what I’ve learned in my travels. I even offered to get him invited to a Sedona meeting. But first things first.  What should a Congressman who is concerned about his constituents, big and small, be thinking about with respect to E-discovery?

I’d like to throw that out to the readers of this blog and formulate a thoughtful group response to a Congressman who took the time to connect on a one-to-one level and ask “Are we doing enough?”

BNA will be holding its “Hot Issues” e-discovery conference today at the Westin Grand in Washington, D.C. An impressive lineup of speakers is scheduled.

E&Y and Nixon Peabody are sponsoring the event.

I’m speaking today on a panel with Tom Barnett of Sullivan Cromwell, Eric Schwartz of E&Y and several other top-flight guys.

I’m hopping on the Amtrak Acela down to D.C. now but will try to blog a bit from the show.

 Here’s the brochure for those interested. I’m sure attendance is still open. More in a few hours…

BNA’s “Hot Issues” conference

 OK - We’re back!

Well today we learned the unfortunate lesson of intermittent Internet access and inclement weather along with the thoughtful content my fellow panelists presented at the BNA “Hot Issues” Conference in Washington.

(This will probably be my pitch to management for broadband Wi-Fi access to enable blogging on Amtrak’s Acela train and in hotels without Wi-Fi access in their conference rooms).

Unfortunately, a few panelists (and attendees) missed the event, thanks the inclement weather.

Those who did make it were treated to insightful discussions of six noteworthy electronic-evidence cases (see brochure link for list). Ron Hedges, Judge Grimm, Judge Waxse and John Barkett brought their unique perspective to cases touching upon ephemeral data, admissibility  of ESI, access to adversary’s databases and form of production.

I had the pleasure of speaking today with Eric Schwartz, Bobbie Basile (E&Y), Tom Barnett (Sullivan & Cromwell) and Jason Baron (National Archives). We covered two combined tracks of the conference, reviewing cost containment and e-discovery process.  Tom and Eric detailed what corporations have done in the past and what they’re likely to do in the future. We touched upon Legal Hold, a topic I lived with during my time at Merrill Lynch. Jason gave a brief presentation of NIST TREC activities and, as all panelists are active in Sedona, various references were made to new thought leadership pieces there. (see On The Mark “Vortex, Mass Amounts of Thought Leadership” for links to docs)

Today’s BNA event was well run, staffed with great speakers and offered solid content — great value for attendees and the companies and governmental agencies for whom they work.

By Mark Reichenbach - October 23, 2007 

The EDRM today announced the release of a standard XML format to be used in the exchange of electronic data between applications. The industry has long needed this standard and it’s a good thing. Let me tell you why.

You could look at this as a “Universal Load File” — a very useful thing for corporations with disparate systems and service providers who must support them.  I’d look for this XML format to be helpful to opposing parties who must “meet and confer” under the FRCP for their 26(f) conferences as far as agreeing on a particular data load file format.

“The XML standard addresses a major pain point within E-Discovery - moving and formatting the different types of data across all of these disparate systems - and is an important step toward streamlining the process,” says George Socha, co-founder of EDRM and president of Socha Consulting LLC. “By adopting this standard, MetaLINCS is taking a leadership position in creating greater efficiencies within the e-discovery process.”

It is interesting to note that ALL the participating organizations had representatives involved in the creation of this standard. Zantaz, Summation, Concordance and MetaLINCS all contributed to the effort. Many others involved in EDRM have committed to supporting the XML standard by February’s LegalTech. 

Make no mistake, this XML format is now cued up to become the industry standard as we march ahead. Yet as important as this initiative is to the industry I’m surprised at some of the organizations that did NOT participate in EDRM, at all.

“The XML interchange is a natural fit with how we architected the MetaLINCS e-discovery software platform. From its earliest inception, MetaLINCS’s goal has been to empower companies to perform on-premise E-Discovery with an open, scalable platform that would easily integrate with their existing products and services,” says Chuck Williams, chief technology officer at MetaLINCS. “Unlike point products, the MetaLINCS Enterprise E-Discovery Suite is a completely integrated application that addresses all the core processes of E-Discovery and enables data exchange through an open set of APIs. The EDRM XML standard makes this data interchange more reliable and flexible, increasing accuracy and efficiency and reducing costs for our customers.”

As an old Litigation Support guy from way back, I can recall countless hours of massaging data load files, writing scripts and reading more “import failed” messages, so much so it hurt, all in an effort to get data out of one system and into another. If only this had come along back then!

Fritz Mueller, Senior Director of Product Management for MetaLINCS said

“Now that version 1.0 of the XML standard has been ratified it will be relatively easy to make enhancements to the standard that the whole industry can agree on.  It creates a framework that can be enhanced to exchange more sophisticated types of data.”

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What Fritz does’t mention is the sheer effort and dedication those who participated showed in developing version 1.0 because that’s the hard part! Hat’s off to all those who helped develop a standard that brings real help to a community that can use it.

Now we’re talking (in the same language)!

About EDRM

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Project was launched in 2005 to address the lack of standards and guidelines in the electronic discovery market. The completed reference model provides a common, flexible and extensible framework for the development, selection, evaluation and use of electronic discovery products and services. Information about EDRM is available at http://www.edrm.net.  

View EDRM’s press release here.

Electronic data and chain-of-custody issues aside, I came across this item wondering if privacy concerns are as stringent in New Zealand as they are in the UK and US.

Here’s the BBC news story: 

A New Zealand brewery is reportedly offering a lifetime supply of beer for the return of a stolen laptop. Local media said the laptop was stolen from the Croucher Brewing Company in the central North Island city of Rotorua earlier this week.

Owners were desperate to retrieve the computer containing designs, contact details and financial information, the Rotorua Daily Post said.

They have offered free beer to anyone giving clues leading to its recovery.

Co-owner Paul Croucher said the company would provide a lifetime supply of about 12 bottles a month to anyone who could name the thief.

The company has back-up copies of the material stored on the laptop but these are not up to date, the newspaper said

As if there weren’t enough places to look for discoverable data, Dan Farber and the folks at ZDNet take a look at a new consumer electronics offering that brings the Net into your car.

Dash brings the Internet inside the car by ZDNet’s Dan Farber — At the Web 2.0 Summit, Dash Navigation showed of what it called the world’s first connected navigation platform. The GPS device uses Wi-Fi and the cellular network to connect to the Internet. What’s unique is that the Dash device can mashup with Web services. For example, with a Zillow feed users can see what houses […]