A few days after advocating the use of YouTube videos to promote new ediscovery understanding, I found myself in one with Browning Marean of DLA. Appearing soon at a cinema near you – well, on PivotalDiscovery.com anyway.

If you put a labrador, like my dog Saxon, down almost anywhere – the Moon, say – it does not take him long to find a stick or tennis ball. He does not look for them, particularly, but they just turn up. Much the same is true of me at an e- discovery conference – I wander around, confident that I will soon come across somebody I know or total strangers who seem to know me (which is one up on Saxon who does not generally get hailed by passing tennis balls).

I was walking around the opening party at ILTA 09 having, as I thought, spoken to everyone I knew, when a figure detached herself from a crowd and introduced herself. It was Kina Kim of PivotalDiscovery. com which describes itself as “the community for ediscovery and litigation professionals”. PivotalDiscovery has links to other sites and articles (including, as it turned out, one of mine), a career portal, and an index of events. It also has videos, including some on YouTube, and can be followed on Twitter.

It quickly became clear that Kina and I have similar ideas about the need to serve up accessible resources, aimed particularly at people whose interest outstrips their experience and whose firms lack either the resources or the awareness to help them. It comes as a surprise to UK lawyers to discover firstly that most US lawyers work in small firms and secondly that most of them are no further forward than English lawyers in terms of their understanding of how technology can help solve discovery problems. The downside of getting it wrong in the US is rather higher, with the very real threat of sanctions increasing every year. English lawyers merely lose cases and clients and clock up irrecoverable costs.

Kina told me of meetings of Women in eDiscovery where there was standing room only., which reminds to mention again the meeting of the London Chapter of WiE on 17 September on EU Data Protection.

Kina Kim asked if I would do a video for her and, since my last articles posted before I left had advocated the use of video, I was not in a position to refuse. She roped in Browning Marean of DLA Piper US LLP as well, and we did a couple of off-the-cuff recordings in the hotel lobby a couple of days later. I will point you to them when PivotalDiscovery posts them, assuming that I do not end up on the cutting room floor.

Home