Reinventing Professionals

I spoke with Craig Carpenter, the Vice President and General Counsel of Recommind about predictive coding.

I spoke with Dean Gonsowski, the Vice President of E-Discovery Services at Clearwell Systems about the most misunderstood theme at the conference.

I spoke with Richard Newton, the vice president of Business Integrity, which launched ContractExpress.com at LegalTech NY Day 1.

I spoke with Howard Reissner, CEO of Planet Data and Mark Yacano, a shareholder at LeClairRyan about partnerships between vendors and lawyers, the launch of Exego, and the importance of collaboration for client service.

I spoke with Nigel Murray, the managing director of Trilantic, an e-discovery vendor based in London providing services to U.S. corporations and law firms managing their U.S. collections, processing and hosting for European document projects. We discussed the distinctions between the U.S. and European markets, considerations for U.S. attorneys removing data from the E.U., his predictions for 2010 and an upcoming educational track on the topic at LegalTech New York.

I spoke with Robert Owen, a partner with Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. He is head of the New York location's litigation group, as well as co-head of the firm's E-Discovery and Information Management practice group. Owen is part of the core team that conceived of and has administered Fulbright's Annual Litigation Trends Survey since its inception in 2004. We discussed his New York Law Journal article, Seeking Ways to Set Limits on E-Discovery, in which he cites the factors that are leading numerous groups to initiate re-examinations of U.S. e-discovery rules, summarizes their progress and makes predictions for 2010. He noted that "we are alone among the nations of the world in having adopted a full pre-trial disclosure philosophy back in 1938" and "what we are seeing now is a confluence of efforts" by diverse groups to make litigation more manageable.

I spoke with Ray Zwiefelhofer, the new president of World Software Corporation, the maker of Worldox, a legal document management product. We discussed the company's history and his new role, the greatest technology challenges lawyers and legal staff are facing today, and the 2010 outlook. He predicts the continued growth of mobile and cloud computing, as well as consolidation in the industry.

I spoke with Lisa DiMonte, the CEO of MyLegal.com, a social network for professionals that matches people to opportunities in the legal industry. The site also aggregates and delivers information of interest to this community. We discussed the creation of MyLegal.com, the target audience, how MyLegal.com differs from other social networking platforms and its expansion plans for 2010.

I spoke with Nader Anise, an attorney and the CEO of LawyerWire.com, a media leads and press release distribution service to the legal industry. We discussed the genesis of LawyerWire, the types of queries that it shares with its subscribers and the future of interaction between the legal community and the media.

I spoke with Patrick Oot, the co-founder of the Electronic Discovery Institute, and co-author of a recently released study - Document Categorization in Legal Electronic Discovery: Computer Classification vs. Manual Review - on the effectiveness of technology in document review. Oot will be presenting his findings at the 2009 IQPC E-Discovery conference next week. We discussed the genesis of this study, his reaction to the results and the implications of the research on document review in 2010.