You are probably secretly relieved when this happens, but I always feel I should explain when there is an interruption in the flow of blog posts. Gratifyingly, if slightly disconcertingly, the number of page views on my blog were higher in the week in which I published nothing than in any of the four preceding weeks. I could draw from that the conclusion that I could push off for weeks on end, but that would perhaps be unwise when new stories are appearing all the time.

Although there was some pleasure in it, the week away involved two events in different countries. The first was Relativity Fest London, at which I took part in a panel about the new disclosure rule, did several video interviews on a range of subjects, and had a lot of useful and interesting conversations. The one I always feel sorry for at these events is my son Will, who has to spend the whole day in a corner of a conference centre guarding the equipment and waiting for the next interview.

It takes most of the day to prep for the videos alone, let alone the panel and the rest. The time and effort is amply repaid by the video content we get from it. Almost none of this is time-sensitive, so an event like Relativity Fest gives me a library of interviews to spread out over the coming months.

We had barely unpacked the equipment before my wife and I were off to Heathrow for an event in Milan run by Relativity partner Accuracy. I was the moderator, and don’t like travelling on the day of a distant event for fear of getting delayed en route (I temporarily mislaid my passport twice on this trip, once just before we left home and once just before we returned, so it is not over-cautious to like a buffer period).

Although the event was built around Accuracy’s use of Relativity, its central focus (and, I think, the reason why I was asked to do it) was on introducing eDiscovery concepts to a jurisdiction which has no eDiscovery in its litigation. I was aided in this by European-based senior lawyers from Paul Hastings and Jones Day, and would happily do one of these a month in such company (the venue, Mussolini’s Palazzo dell’Informazione, was pretty special as well).

I will write separately about both events in due courses.

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We had most of the following day in hand before our flight home and spent much of it in the wonderful Milan Cathedral. An elevator whisks you to the roof where you can walk along narrow alleys surrounded by the most remarkable Gothic decoration I have ever seen.

The long descent down narrow steep narrow steps took us to an interior which made me gape with wonder. It took six centuries to build it, starting in 1386.

I would go back to Milan for the food alone, and specifically the Sorbetto di mandarino tardivo at Bice.

Tomorrow I am in London for a discovery-themed lunch. Then comes the chance to settle down and catch up with the stories missed while I was away and with our library of video interviews.

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