Ride the Lightning

ABA TECHSHOW – DAY TWO: THE MOST DAMNING THING IS THE HOLE WHERE EVIDENCE USED TO BE

March 14, 2008

There is no way to adequately report on a day which held the entire e-discovery track. For my own part, I want to thank my co-presenters from two different e-discovery sessions, Judge Herbert Dixon, Judge John Facciola, Browning Marean, and David Ries. The first panel was a report from the battlefront, and offered useful practical tips and some sense of trends in the ED world. The second was on ethics and e-discovery, a constantly evolving subject which has been in the limelight with the Qualcomm decisions. Both were a lot of fun – hope the audience had as much fun as the presenters.

The comedic highlight of the day was Craig Ball’s “E-Discovery Jeopardy,” with three good-natured contestants (who couldn’t remember to answer in the form of a question) and a panel of judges. Laughter and learning did indeed go hand and hand and a good time was had by all. Craig, I have determined that anyone that can create such visual wizardry has WAY too much time on their hands. And by the way, enjoy your cruise, which I hear starts this weekend.

I was then further impressed by Craig and my husband John in their “CSI for Real: The Science of Computer Forensics.” The audience was so engaged that they stayed a full 20 minutes beyond the session’s end asking questions. Most quotable line of the session goes to Craig who talked about spoliation and said that the best evidence in those cases is never the evidence at hand but the damning hole where the evidence used to be. Amen brother.

All in all, a great e-discovery track. I would write more, but John and I are taking an ABA TECHSHOW crew out for sushi as part of the “Taste of TECHSHOW dinners.”  Japanese beer is not all bad either. For a speaker who has had three sessions in one day, I have a feeling that there will be more than one Kirin Ichiban in my immediate future.

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