I am always happy to get involved in debates about the best way of dealing with eDiscovery problems. The following tips may be helpful:

• Pretty well every supplier in this market has something less than complimentary to say about pretty well every other supplier. I have heard it all before, and my amiable smile and occasional nods should not be understood as meaning that I am taking any notice.
• Justice (as in “Justice demands that courts should be aware…”) is not, alas, an absolute, but depends on the availability of proportionate resources – a justice you cannot afford is no justice. Justice as an abstract does not have a budget.
• The market is pretty good at differentiating between things which work and things which do not.
• Increasing the volume does nothing to enhance the argument.
• The least I hope for if I take part in such a discussion (or any other discussion, come to that) is that I will be permitted to get to the end of my sentences in reply.

I had not heard the expression “tactical swearing” before, but it describes perfectly my escape hatch when all other means of ending the conversation fail to work. When this usually polite gentleman resorts to the F word as a conversational gambit, you know that you have lost his attention.

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