The next round of conferences begins on 10 and 11 September with Ark Group’s Adopting practical guidelines for E-Disclosure management at which I am again speaking with HHJ Simon Brown QC. Our subject is Preparing Judges to make effective e-Disclosure decisions.

I have five more to do in London in 2008, plus one in Sydney and six regional talks for the Law Society. Next year’s bookings are beginning to come in.

By then, the trial period for the Commercial Court Recommendations will have run its course, the new draft directions order will have been in use for six months or so in the Mercantile Courts and we should be close to having a Technology Questionnaire as a required stage in the case management process. If you do not know what any of these things are, or what effect they will have, it is time to start finding out. Between them, they signal a more rigorous approach to case management, with particular emphasis on electronic disclosure. It will no longer be possible to treat Part 31 CPR and its Practice Direction as optional.

By then also, Australia should be using its new Practice Note on electronic discovery which has the potential to transform the management of e-disclosure in that jurisdiction.

For an update on the US position, I hope to make it to part of the Masters Conference which runs in in Washington on 16-17 October. The draw there is US Magistrate Judge John Facciola who is the keynote speaker on the second day. I spent a morning with him at Autonomy’s Legal Forum in Washington in July, and am keen to hear more of his thoughts on US developments. Whether I get there or not turns on airline timetables, since I am speaking in Sydney earlier that week.

See you at one of the conferences.

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