Wendy is a frequent speaker and serves as a part-time instructor for an undergraduate business course offered by Penn State University’s World Campus on the topic of the social, legal and ethical environment of business. She has experience in eDiscovery and digital forensics in a wide array of workplace litigation matters, including harassment and discrimination defense, ADA claims, restrictive covenant and trade secrets matters, and other employment litigation.

Wendy wrote the article WhatsApp Messages May Be Gone But Never Forgotten – At Least Not By the DOJ: Your Company’s 6-Step Action Plan | Fisher Phillips.

She describes a six-step action plan for organizations:

1. Audit current authorized applications

2. Research technology solutions

3. Implement policies

4. Comply with record-keeping obligations

5. Train employees

6. Monitor and enforce employee compliance

Key Takeaways:

The pandemic led to the use of more workplace collaboration tools, which make E-discovery more difficult by expanding the volume and increasing the places data can be stored.

Ephemeral messing apps make it harder to preserve and govern data generated by employees. If employers don’t provide tools that employees need, they will find their own, but consumer-level products do not provide the same controls as enterprise versions.

Organizations should develop a robust Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) compliance program.

The U.S. Department of Justice released the Monaco Memo that outlined the need for:

• Effective policies about using personal devices and third-party messaging applications for work;
• Employee training on these policies; and

• Enforcement of policy violations.

Jessica worked for IBM for many years managing its litigation support department. She specializes in e-discovery, data retention, information governance, workflow improvement, and document processing. You can find her on LinkedIn.

She wrote the book Yet I Rise: The True Story of a Young Woman's Journey to Succeed Despite All Evils.

Key Takeaways

As a legal operations manager, Jessica manages data retention, e-discovery, cybersecurity, trust, compliance, investigations, and risk.

Legal operations departments have more technology today, but they also have larger data volumes and fewer workers, adding to the day-to-day stress level and pressure to perform quickly.

A myriad of laws and regulations is making the field of legal operations increasingly complex.

Legal operations professionals are seeking ways to deal with the overwhelming number of decisions they must make on a daily basis.

Jessica manages stressful days at work by getting up early to mentally prepare.

Sonya specializes in the areas of in-house legal/litigation practices and procedures, management of core-team efforts to implement policies, procedures and tools helping to mitigate risks associated with the preservation and production of electronically stored information thereby ensuring compliance with federal and state laws and regulations.

Sonya is on the board of the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS).

Key Takeaways

T-Mobile has created processes, workflows, and classification systems to deal with large amounts of employee and customer data in a highly regulated industry. Internally, about 4 million Slack messages and more than half a million emails are sent daily. The average employee has 50-100 gigabytes of email data. Sonja says it’s important to educate employees to make sure they understand their data is discoverable.

Privacy is also a major part of handling data. Sonja says it is essential to conduct regular audits and trainings to assess needs and update access to information.

One of the most difficult problems with data in the telecommunications industry is dealing with name changes and aliases. It can be hard to verify an identity.

Madelaine Lane and Scott Carvo are partners and litigators at Warner Norcross & Judd, a corporate law firm in Michigan. In this episode of BDO’s Legal Tech Talk podcast, they discuss the need to collaborate with clients and cooperate with opposing counsel in e-discovery to build trust and reach a fair outcome at the lowest cost.

Hosts Jared Crafton, BDO’s Forensic Technology Practice Leader, and Daniel Gold, BDO’s Managing Director of the Enterprise E-Discovery Managed Services practice, lead the discussion.

Key Takeaways:

• Scott says it’s important to have conversations with clients to align your goals and understand the sources of data to be collected in a case. It’s also important to reach out to opposing counsel at the beginning. Being proactive is as necessary as being reactive in e-discovery.
• Madelaine says civil litigators are leading the way in embracing legal technology, and the criminal bar is making strides dealing with large amounts of data, especially in major investigations.
• Scott says the parties involved in a case are much better equipped to arrive at a resolution than judges on the bench because they know the technology and data sources.
• Collaboration and cooperation are needed to build trust. The proliferation of data due to the increasing number of internet-connected devices is making collaboration more important than ever to keep costs down. Ninety percent of cases settle out of court, and it’s in the best interest of both parties to work together for a faster and fair resolution.
• The proliferation of data is making e-discovery increasingly more time consuming and expensive. Legal professionals are seeking ways to deal with the overwhelming amount of data they handle in litigation.
• Legal professionals are moving away from the framework of adversaries, demands, and opposition and moving towards regarding each other as counselors and advisors.

Korein Tillery is one of the country’s leading plaintiffs’ complex-litigation firms, where Stephanie leverages more than 15 years of experience in finance, consulting, and data analytics to manage large litigation projects, as well as the firm’s e-Discovery platform. She won Relativity’s Innovation Award for Stellar Women in E-Discovery in 2019.

Discussion topics include:

• Dealing with technical production issues and disputes
• Agreeing to production formats in a protocol or informally
• Finding out what you don’t know and reaching out to others in the industry
• Automating basic steps in the discovery process, developing workflows and teaching others
• Incorporating generative AI into e-discovery

David Horrigan, Relativity’s Discovery Counsel and Legal Education Director, has predictions for E-Discovery in 2023. David is an attorney, award-winning journalist, law school guest lecturer, and former E-Discovery industry analyst. He has served as counsel at the Entertainment Software Association, reporter and assistant editor at The National Law Journal, and analyst and counsel at 451 Research.

In this episode of BDO’s Legal Tech Talk Podcast, David talks about artificial intelligence, sanctions, and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure with hosts Jared Crafton, BDO’s Forensic Technology Practice Leader, and Daniel Gold, BDO’s Managing Director of the Enterprise E-Discovery Managed Services practice.

Key Takeaways

• The explosion of data in E-Discovery is making A.I. integration necessary.
• In the Relativity Blog, David wrote The Top Trends Dominating e-Disclosure in 2023.
• David is a frequent contributor to Legaltech News, and his articles have appeared in The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, and The New York Law Journal.

Key Takeaways

• Christine says the way companies, law firms and vendors contract with each other is leading to poor mental health outcomes for e-discovery providers. She is part of The Mind-Body Connection, a group of attorneys and research volunteers who are looking into the problem.
• In the ALM Intelligence 2022 Mental Health and Substance Abuse Survey, 44% of respondents working at law firms of all sizes agreed that mental health problems and substance abuse are at a “crisis level.”

Christine is one of 23 women featured in Women in Law: Discovering the True Meaning of Success, who describe the ups of downs of pursuing a career in the law, and how they are finding success on their own terms.

Key Takeaways

• Brad sees LegalWeek as a homecoming after attending the conference for 16 years.
• He attends LegalWeek to find like minds and those who are a step ahead to fill in any gaps he may have in legal technology.
• Brad is interested in teaching the next generation because the legal industry is better when we share what we know.

Key Takeaways

• David is a thought leader in legal technology. He is EDRM’s Chair of the Project Trustees, and he’s on the Advisory Board of Georgetown’s Advanced eDiscovery Institute.
• David works with Reed Smith’s legal technology subsidiary Gravity Stack and writes for the Reed Smith’s Viewpoints blog.
• He says LegalWeek has changed a lot in the last five years. It used to have mainly E-Discovery exhibitors, but now there a lot of contract AI firms.

Key Takeaways

• Phil sees a lot of uses for generative AI, but he is concerned about fake content making it difficult to determine what is real.
• During a panel discussion at LegalWeek, Phil learned how some companies are using ephemeral apps. He compares ephemeral messages to water cooler conversations.
• To get ahead in the stressful environment of E-Discovery and litigation, Phil suggests being kind to others.