Metadata, as we all know, is data about data. Perhaps next year we could have predictions about predictions – an article put up at about the beginning of November guessing what the various pundits will include in their list of predictions for 2012, based on their known interests.

My own, for example, are likely to include one about medium-sized firms taking work away from large ones, one about the e-Disclosure Practice Direction, one about the e-Disclosure implications of some pending legislation, one about US-EU privacy conflicts, a side-swipe at judges who fail in their duty to manage the discovery aspects of the cases, and a poke at the government, some civil servants or a government agency.

That is what I gave this year, anyway, as my contribution to Computers & Law’s seasonal collection of predictions. There are links to all the other contributions down the right-hand side. I am not volunteering, but it would be interesting to consolidate them into a Top 10 and review them at the end of next year to see how many of them came good.

I will not attempt an index of all the other sets of predictions made around the world which relate to e-discovery. You should not miss those put up by the Posse List, which thankfully declines to take the whole subject too seriously. I like in particular the prediction that “Browning Marean’s great-great grandchild writes e-book on the implications for legal holds.”

I think I am safe in suggesting that most of us in this field will be even busier next year. I do not aspire to beating the 150,000 miles which I flew in 2010, but who knows? I do expect to do more UK road and rail miles (I mean even more than I did in 2010, not more than 150,000 miles), largely as a result of my first C&L prediction, the one about medium-sized firms.

Home