My next trip to Washington DC (I am there as I write, at ILTA) is for IQPC’s Information Governance and eDiscovery Strategy Exchange which runs from 19 to 21 September at the Marriot Fairview Park. This event is organised by the London-based team which puts on the very successful European eDiscovery conferences, the next of which is in Munich on 27 to 29 November.

As its name implies, this event focuses on strategy. That implies a long-term, proactive and pre-emptive approach to the problems raised by the need to disclose electronic documents for litigation, for regulatory purposes and for internal investigations, and the session titles and speakers reflect this. One of the early panels, for example, is called Closing The Gap Between Legal, IT & Records Management To Ensure An Enterprise-Wide Information Governance & eDiscovery Strategy, to be discussed by, amongst others, Jason Baron, Director of Litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration and Barry Murphy of eDJ Group.

Running my eye down the list of speakers, I see Allison Stanton, Director of e-Discovery in the Civil Division of the DOJ, Mark Yacano of Hudson Legal, David Horrigan of 451 Research, Maura Grossman of Wachtell, Lipton Rosen & Katz, Patrick Oot of the Electronic Discovery Institute and David Shonka of the Federal Trade Commission who will, with many others, cover a wide range of topics both current – the cloud, social media, BYOD and costs – and future with, for example, a panel about technology developments and market consolidation.

I have the pleasure of chairing a panel involving judges from the US, the UK, Australia and Ireland. Its narrow title concerns data protection and privacy but, with a team like that, I will not miss the opportunity to cover wider topics of comparative approaches to the handling of  documents in disputes.

This is a tightly-focused event, concentrating on the increasingly urgent needs of general counsel and those who advise them. In addition to the sessions, there are think-tanks, networking events and business meetings which allow space for thought and discussion in between high-quality talks and panels.

In connection with the conference, eDJ Group has published a paper called eDJ Information Governance Report 2012 which I commend to anyone who is in doubt that IG is one of the more serious issues facing businesses today.

I am looking forward to it and to seeing you there.

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