Monday 17th May 2010: Pre-Conference Workshops

A) Ready for the regulator: the importance of equality of arms

Equality of arms sounds like an expression more suited to a military theatre rather than a legal one. But we are hearing it increasingly in the corporate and litigation arenas and there’s good reason for its recent emergence. Consider the following for a moment: you are a corporate legal head and you contact your lawyers in a panic because a regulator has asked you to 'comply' with certain regulatory procedures in supplying emails relating to a particular contract expedited over a two year period.

That same regulator has tools that will immediately get to the core of the matter within hours. You, the corporate (and your law firm), have to image two years of electronic data forensically, then pre-process and process it before you can get it onto a review platform – it’s only at this point that you can start to distil the information expertly albeit not so quickly. Government and City watchdogs and many proactive private and public corporations are now using cutting-edge IT solutions that make these traditional yet cumbersome methodologies quite simply redundant.

So what if you leverage the same tools they’re using? How much more defensible is your client's case? What if you can respond within hours instead of days or weeks? With such tools now cost-effectively delivered and professionally supported by specialists like Legal Inc, a level playing field should be within everyone’s reach. For too long, technology has been used as a weapon by the ‘haves’ against the ‘have-nots’. Join us at our session to discover how equality of arms is putting an end to unequal fights – and to uncertain outcomes when the regulator comes knocking.

Nick Pollard Head of Client Management Legal Inc	Matthew Davis Litigation Support Lawyer Lovells LLP
Peter Cladouhos Esq, Practice Support Electronic Discovery Consultan Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP	Chris Dale The e-Disclosure Information Project
Vince Neicho Litigation Support Specialist Allen & Overy	Bill Sillett Enforcement Officer Financial Services Authority
Antony Montague Associate General Counsel McGraw Hill Companies

B) Balancing Cost, Time and Quality when looking for electronic evidence

Electronically Stored Information (ESI) is pivotal to all modern factual review exercises. Whether you are reviewing historic data for present business purposes, responding to a regulatory enquiry, conducting an internal investigation or examining evidence in a dispute and providing disclosure of relevant documentation, the likelihood is that ESI will contain important evidence relevant to that review. Moreover, the ESI most likely to contain the most useful information (particularly emails) is likely to be in unstructured format. Finding that kind of crucial piece of evidence in the mountain of available unstructured ESI can feel akin to searching a landfill site for one discarded receipt. It is a significant challenge. The time and cost of conducting such an exercise can very easily get out of hand and become disproportionate to the issues under consideration.

It is crucially important to retain focus on the purpose of the review, to monitor regularly the costs and benefits of the steps being undertaken and to be prepared to call a halt to particular activities when they are reaping diminishing returns. Both anecdotally and according to independent surveys (eg Socha-Gelbmann), the project management necessary to enable such informed client decision making is one of the most significant areas of dissatisfaction amongst clients experienced in conducting such reviews of ESI for disputes, investigations and other purposes. The purpose of this workshop is to empower corporate and law firm clients alike to monitor and improve project management practices associated with the search for electronic evidence. Sharing direct client-side experience, the aim is to enable clients to take control of the process. This is a practical session. Issues we will address include:

• Emphasis on proportionality
• Impact of Lord Jackson’s review
• First hand experiences of project management
• Common pitfalls and complaints
• Project management tools and techniques
• Coherent project plan articulation
• Effective progress tracking and communications

Sanjay Bhandari Partner Ernst & Young

Brian Stuart Assistant Director Ernst & Young

C) Crossing the Threshold – When data Becomes Evidence

Companies facing litigation and/or regulatory investigations need to implement measures to ensure the continued availability of electronic evidence. The ability to alter electronic data—accidentally or intentionally—means that reliable practices and procedures must be adopted to ensure that the integrity and evidentiary value of critical data is preserved. Given the volume of data available and the wide variety of electronic storage locations available a considered and proportionate approach to data preservation and collection is required.

This panel of legal experts, consultants and forensic specialists will consider the following topics:

• When the preservation duty arises
• Which sources of data are subject to preservation obligations
• How to navigate increasingly complex IT infrastructures
• How to implement the legal hold
• What format evidence should be preserved in
• How to retain the evidentiary value of critical data and avoid spoliation
• New technologies: audio evidence, social networking data, cloud computing and virtualisation
• Pre-Litigation steps companies can take to reduce the risk and cost of evidence handling
• The impact of email archiving and enterprise-wide information management systems

Tony Dearsley Manager of Computer Forensics Kroll Ontrack.	Rob Jones Legal Consultant Kroll Ontrack.
John Doherty Partner Manches	Felicity Minzlaff Baker & McKenzie

D) The nuts & bolts of responding to eDisclosure obligations

Designed for lawyers and litigation support professionals looking for practical guidance on procedures, technology and team structures that work in their corporate environment.

Focus on how corporate teams coordinate their approach that meets disclosure requirements and respects data protection restrictions.

You will learn:

• Who should be on your company’s eDisclosure team?
• Procedures to follow, and how to document compliance
• Compliance with data protection
• Technology options for searching and preserving electronically stored information
• Strategies for reducing costs

Panellists from in-house law departments and outside law firms will share their best practices with attendees. Workshop leaders will include:

Christina Ayiotis Deputy General Counsel – E-Discovery and Data Privacy CSC	Marc Fishman Senior Counsel Hoffman-La Roche	Denise Backhouse Morgan Lewis & Bockius
Ed Sautter Partner Mayer Brown International LLP	Patrick Burke Senior Director & Assistant General Counsel Guidance Software

E) eDiscovery demystified

Electronically stored information is replacing mountains of paper in today’s business world. But for some lawyers, in-house counsel and IT departments, therein lies a new terror – how to tackle the identification, collection, review and production of electronic documents. Is this really a massive leap from traditional comfort zones? And can technology simultaneously make the process more efficient and less expensive?

This session will cover:

• Understanding locations within your organisation where relevant data may be stored
• Legally defensible technical and procedural solutions for the preservation of electronic records
• Metadata: what is it any why is it important?
• Technical solutions for the reduction of large document volumes to focus on relevant material
• Efficient strategies for document review and exchange, and the benefits that technology brings to the process
• Time and cost reduction and management strategies

Craig Earnshaw Managing Director FTI

Steve Buddell Managing Director FTI

Nick Athanasi Managing Director FTI

F) Early Case Assessment strategies and the pitfalls of disjointed collection

What We Will Cover:

• The disparate collection techniques and their potential pitfalls (and benefits)
• Ethics issues related to early (pre-litigation) searches and discovery
• Devising sophisticated keyword search criteria to focus on key aspects of a potential litigation
• Recent case law regarding keyword searches
• Recent case law on preservation and spoliation

What You Will Learn:

• How to exploit existing tools to identify potentially relevant electronically stored information (ESI)
• How to collect the ESI in a standardised manner that is defensible and resistant to challenges
• How to review the ESI quickly to make an educated assessment of the company's exposure and the merits of the case
• How to conduct pre-Rule 26(f) conference searches in order to cut discovery costs

Brian Karney Chief Operating Officer AccessData Corporation

Philip W. Goodin Esq., VP Litigation Services UnitedLex Corporation