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    eDiscovery Leaders Live
    March 22nd

    eDiscovery Leaders Live: Joy Heath Rush of ILTA

    George Socha
    George Socha

    eDiscovery Leaders Live: Joy Heath Rush of ILTA

    Joy Heath Rush, the CEO of ILTA, joins George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal, for a special ACEDS #eDiscoveryLeadersLive from Legalweek in New York. 

    Joy has spent nearly 40 years providing document and IT services to lawyers.  Prior to joining ILTA, she was VP of Client Development Litéra.  She joined Litera following a 28-year career at global law firm Sidley Austin LLP. 

    Joy has a long history of leadership in peer networking groups associated with legal technology, beginning with the Washington Perfectionists, the first WordPerfect user group dedicated to legal.  She also served on the Legal Advisory Council for both WordPerfect and Microsoft. Joy is a frequent speaker and writer on a wide array of technology and leadership topics. 

    After taking on a walk down memory lane – does anyone remember physical Bates machines? – Joy talked about her background and taking the reins at ILTA. From there, she turned to the results from ILTA’s recent Litigation & Practice Support, Technology, and G100 surveys, focusing in particular on outsourcing, cost recovery, certifications, and training and talent management. Finally, Joy gave us a quick preview of ILTACON 2022, to be held August 21 to 25 at the Gaylord National in National Harbor, Maryland. 

    Key Highlights

      • [2:20] We reminisce about the pre-E days of discovery – Bates stamp machines, Bleak House cases, and more. 
      • [4:00] Joy’s career journey, from using the earliest PCs through her days at Litera. 
      • [15:13] Notable findings: Certifications. 
      • [17:47] Notable findings from ILTA’s G100 group survey: Training and talent management. 
      • [20:15] Training law firms provide to staff compared with training law firms provide to attorneys.  
      • [22:02] A sellers’ market in labor. 
      • [23:05] Joy’s personal favorite survey result about eDiscovery: The strong demand for quality and expertise. 
      • [24:03] The most fascinating survey result: The strong demand for organizations to preserve and the dominance of network and local shares. 
      • [25:29] Notable findings: The greatly accelerated move to the cloud at the attendant discovery demands. 
      • [26:15] ILTACON 2022: What to expect. 


    Key Quotes by Joy Heath Rush

        • “When the [ILTA] CEO role came open I loved what I was doing. It would have taken a job like this to pull me away that. But to me it was the chance of a lifetime, to take my lifelong passion for legal technology, loving to lead people, work with the legal leaders – it was a dream come true as far as I was concerned.” 

        • “It’s great to be in a place where I can embrace my inner geek, because as I say, ‘You can take the girl out of the geek but you can’t take the geek out of the girl.’” 
        • “One of the things the staff really believes is the volunteers – members and business partners – are the lifeblood of the organization.” 
        • “There really is not a single organization that is not outsourcing some aspect of litigation support and eDiscovery…. You tend to see that people outsource almost everything or almost nothing.” 
        • “There was a very interesting analysis about cost recovery…. People are all over the board about costs recovery with the only thing being really in common is this sense of the hosting…people are paying for the hosting and they are passing that along.” 
        • “The data shows the incredible value of certifications in this particular industry.” 


    Connect with Joy