eDiscovery Leaders Live: Monica Dunne and Ian Chivers of Delium
Monica Dunne and Ian Chivers, directors at Delium, join George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal, as part of a special ACEDS #eDiscoveryLeadersLive series broadcast from ILTACON 2022.
Monica has worked in legal technology and digital evidence since the mid 1990’s and has over 25 years’ experience consulting in eDiscovery and hearings. Monica started her career working in top-tier law firms designing evidence management strategies using technology for some of the largest litigations and company divestments in Australia. She then transitioned to a private consulting firm supporting a global client base. Today, Monica leads the team at evidence presentation technology developer Delium while still consulting internationally for select clients. Monica Dunne holds a Global MBA.
Ian has worked in legal technology and digital evidence since the late 1970’s and has led Delium focusing on evidence presentation technology for more than 25 years. Ian's professional experience spans the application of technology to all phases of the litigation lifecycle. In 1994, he designed and led the operation of the first paperless courtroom and the late phases of the EDRM have been the focus of his professional effort since then. Until recently, he lectured regularly at postgraduate level, and he is the author of various papers addressing technology to support evidence presentation and management in Courts. In 1997, he was the first recipient of the NSW Law Society legal technology award for his work implementing an entirely paperless office. Ian holds several United States, Australian and international patents and is an Australian nationally accredited mediator.
Monica and Ian talked about the electronic courtroom, starting with the first paperless hearing in 1994 through today’s personalized, interactive, and cloud-based capabilities. They started with a walk down memory lane, discussing that first paperless hearing and their respective entries into this business. They explained the Australian numbering system, then moved to “personalization” and “interactivity” as foundational concepts for electronic hearings and trials. They described how one might use their system in such a setting, covered some of the challenges, then laid out their vision for the next evolutionary step in how hearings are run.
Key Highlights
- [2:13] Ian and the first paperless hearing anywhere: what it was, what it looked like, and how they got there.
- [5:24] Monica’s entry into paper and then electronic trial presentations.
- [6:37] The Australian numbering system.
- [8:16] Personalization and interactivity: key concepts in digital evidence presentation.
- [11:56] Using Delium during trial prep and at trial.
- [13:13] What the process looks like from the user perspective.
- [13:47] Usage in the courtroom.
- [15:15] Native versus nonnative files at trials.
- [16:37] The biggest challenges when presenting at trial.
- [18:09] New counsels’ notes feature.
- [18:22] Addressing the challenge of the 3 am document.
- [20:25] Creating a more agile approach to trial presentation.
- [22:00] The next evolutionary step in how hearings are run.
Key Quotes
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- “The benefit of Delium is that it is just a website so there is no need for specialist infrastructure. It’s been designed so that the parties can do a lot of what would traditionally be done by a court operator themselves.”
- “We can set up a trial that is anywhere. We ran trials from Brisbane that were happening in Copenhagen and Edenborough and Greece all at the same time.”
- “It’s fair to say that the preference now is for the native file, even at hearings, but there are lots of native files that are difficult to comprehend.”
- “It keeps coming back to the concept of personalization – everybody in the courtroom is different, everybody has a different job, everybody needs to see and do different things. And then the doing is the interactive part.”