Friday mornings at 11 am ET, I don a headset, string up a green screen, and settle down to chat with a leader in eDiscovery or related areas. Sponsored by Reveal, eDiscovery Leaders Live is hosted by ACEDS.
We kicked off eDiscovery Leaders Live in its current format on September 18, 2020. Since then, I have had the opportunity to talk with leaders from across the organization spectrum: corporate, law firm, provider. Each session has been a delight for me, a chance to talk with old friends and new. Our guests bring with them their experience, expertise, and insights – all of which they generously share with a large and growing audience live, and via recordings and transcriptions of the sessions.
The Format
The format of the sessions is simple. eDiscovery Leaders Live airs each Friday at 11 am ET. I start each session by introducing that week’s guest. I keep introductions brief – background and perhaps an additional interesting tidbit or two – and move to the discussion.
We want a discussion. I mostly limit myself to questions. The bulk of our time together is dedicated to hearing from the guests. We encourage audience questions; live attendees can type those into the chat portion of the platform.
The topics we cover vary from week to week. What we cover is a function of the experiences, expertise, and interests each guest brings to the session. We only do a limited amount of advance planning, for I find too much time preparing easily can lead to a stale discussion by the time we go live.
How to Attend
ACEDS broadcasts the sessions live through its LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook channels. You can attend the sessions live, joining in with your thoughts and questions. You also can go the same locations to view recordings of the sessions:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/50635/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/acedsonline
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-HbMLO3SYoHi13CAzUhfEg
• FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/aceds.org
Reveal hosts the recordings as well, at eDiscovery Leaders Live. We include transcriptions of the recordings, adding overviews, headings, and links to additional information.
Our Guests So Far
We have had the privilege to talk with seven wonderful guests so far.
Wendell Jisa and Jay Leib, Reveal
We kicked off the series with a double-header. I chatted with two members of Reveal’s executive leadership team, Wendell Jisa, Chief Executive Officer, and Jay Leib, Executive Vice President, Innovation & Strategy. We looked at Reveal’s history, noted that I had joined Reveal, then devoted the rest of our time discussing Reveal’s recent acquisition of NexLP.
Aaron Crews, Littler
On September 25, I talked with Aaron Crews. Aaron is the Chief Data Analytics Officer at Littler, the world’s largest employment law firm. We discussed what is and what is not artificial intelligence; looked at how to crawl, walk, and then run with AI in litigation; and tried gazing into our murky crystal ball to figure out where AI will take litigators in the future.
Jon Lavinder, Epiq
Next came Jon Lavinder. As Director, Technology-Assisted Review, at Epiq, Jon lead’s the company’s technology-assisted review service line. Our discussion ranged from lessons learned the hard way during the early days of technology assisted review, to how he has been able to make effective use of and then operationalize TAR, to a new service offering Epiq will be rolling out.
Manfred Gabriel, Holland & Knight
For the third session, we were joined by Manfred Gabriel. Manfred is Senior Counsel at Holland & Knight, where he leads the firm’s Support Services organization. In that role, Manfred oversees the firm’s comprehensive and integrated eDiscovery and fact-finding unit. We talked about eDiscovery past and present; about the new eDiscovery capabilities Manfred has been rolling out at Holland & Knight; and about the future of eDiscovery, particularly how through effective use of AI it can reconnect attorneys to their cases, how it can help counsel find what matters most, and how lawyers can use it to build their cases.
Ron Tienzo, Construction Discovery Experts
Ron Tienzo joined us the next week. Ron Tienzo is a Senior Consultant at Construction Discovery Experts. Ron specializes in helping clients use cutting-edge machine learning/AI, advanced analytics, and custom workflows to handle complex and large-scale litigation, in particular construction litigation. Equipped with creative visual aids, Ron talked about AI, challenges with using generalized AI for discovery, and the benefits he has experienced using pre-built AI models as well as creating his own custom ones.
Richard Robinson, Toyota Motor North America
Rich Robinson was our most recent guest. Rich is the Director of Legal Operations & Litigation Support at Toyota Motor North America Inc. Rich and I sat down to talk about what it’s like to be in-house in eDiscovery. Rich shared his thoughts on the biggest issue facing eDiscovery today, ephemeral data and collaborative platforms. He suggested that to be effective, in-house personnel needed to become techno-linguists, that law firms really need to leverage their support personnel and that providers should become extensions of and partners with legal departments. Finally, Rich reminded us of the importance of becoming part of the legal community.
Future Guests
I look forward to continuing these discussions. Slated to talk with us in the coming weeks are Udi Hershkovich of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Ron Best of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, Rachel McAdams of A&L Goodbody in Dublin, and Luke Smith of Legal Technology Innovations in Brussels.
If you would like to join us on eDiscovery Leaders Live or have suggestions for someone you think we should add, please contact me at gsocha@revealdata.com.