Reed Smith has recruited Patrick Burke as Counsel in its Records and EDiscovery (RED) Group. It is not perhaps a coincidence that I wrote about Reed Smith recently in an article called Reed Smith: 6 reasons to Insource Litigation Support
– I would love to be able to write more about law firm eDiscovery
expertise, but few of them seem to have much to say. That does not imply
any lack of expertise, merely that few of them have woken up to the
marketing potential of this skill-set. Thanks to its RED Group, Reed
Smith has plenty to say. Their press release about Patrick Burke’s appointment is an example.

Looking back, I see I also wrote about Reed Smith last April in an article called Reed Smith chooses Equivio Zoom for Predictive Coding and Analytics and Relativity for Review, and I subsequently spoke to David Cohen,
head of the RED Group. From him I learned that the firm does more than
make a profit from its eDiscovery group – they win work and new clients
with it. That message now forms part of my talks to lawyers, an antidote
to the fear-inducing catalogue of rules, new responsibilities and
sanctions which necessarily bulks large in any talk on the subject.

Patrick Burke was one of the first people I came across when I made
my first forays into US eDiscovery in 2007. He was Assistant General
Counsel at Guidance Software,
and we have done countless panels and webinars, made videos, and
written papers together since then, in the US, in the UK and in mainland
Europe. There are not many US eDiscovery people who have bothered to
understand the differences between jurisdictions, but Patrick has, and
it shows.

Law firm litigation departments face a number of alternative business
models who want to eat their lunch. They include the clients
themselves, providers of technology and managed review services, and the
big consulting firms. One of the factors which differentiate the latter
from law firms is their willingness to employ people with a range of
skills, including technical skills. One of the many things which Patrick
Burke will bring to Reed Smith as he goes back into litigation practice
is a deep eDiscovery knowledge, specifically in relation to
identification, collection and legal hold which are amongst Guidance
Software’s specialist areas, and on topics like cross-border discovery.

Guidance Software has invited Patrick and me to take part in a cross-border panel at CEIC 2013 in Orlando. I hope that I will have the opportunity of working with him on other things in his new career at Reed Smith.