The Legal Guy

From afar, Legal Technology Editor Sean Doherty monitored developments at LegalTech in Los Angeles. Among other highlights, Doherty notes that technology vendors focused on mobility while EDD providers touted early case assessment and advanced search and collection techniques.

You suspect an employee is leaking inside information. An investigation reveals that the employee accessed a personal Web-based e-mail account from a company computer and that the login information has been recovered. Can you log into that account and read its e-mail content?

High costs and lost documents have given e-discovery -- or e-disclosure as it's known in the U.K. -- negative press at times. But is EDD as bad as it's made out to be? Vince Neicho, litigation support manager at Allen & Overy, looks at trans-Atlantic differences and changes to come.

Software developers that block Internet ads and viruses enjoy a broad immunity from lawsuits brought by companies whose Web pages are blocked, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week. But the court sounded a cautionary note about the breadth of such immunity.

Reed Smith hadn't invested enough in information infrastructure and processes such as document retrieval were taking too long. To take control of its data before it took hold of them, the firm implemented Recommind's MindServer Search platform as its knowledge management base.

Sedona Conference founder Richard Braman wants law schools to teach lawyers to collaborate during e-discovery and drop the gladiatorial style of litigation to deal with mounting volumes of data. Less adversarial EDD is the goal of his Cooperation Proclamation.

When IT pros are thrust into management, how do they make sense of all the options and standards for developing good management skills while drawing on the experience of others? This question led the International Legal Technology Association to develop a knowledge base for managers.

Lawyers incur tremendous administrative costs in servicing clients who are resistant if not hostile to the idea of these costs being billed back to them. Mattern & Associates CEO and founder Robert Mattern brings to light trends in law firm cost recovery in an increasingly digital world.

Although the Obama administration appears to have backed off from more extreme plans to merge the Securities and Exchange Commission in a major consolidation of agencies, the SEC may still surrender authority to the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a new consumer protection agency. Inept as some divisions of the SEC may have been, however, it does not follow that moving around the boxes on a regulatory design chart will improve matters, says law professor John C. Coffee Jr.