Ride the Lightning

YOU'LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT! AND OTHER RUMINATIONS FROM JAMAICA

December 8, 2008

Only a complete fool would be in Jamaica composing a blog post. Enter the fool.

I tried to be helpful and open our champagne on our final night in Jamaica, but John immediately forbid that, intoning one of his favorite lines from the movie A Christmas Story, "You'll shoot your eye out!" Probably right too.

So I got to write this post and was served bubbly at the same time. Not bad duty.

While poolside today, I was thinking about all the CLEs we've taught and attended over the course of the year. Though we've given and attended dozens and dozens of electronic evidence seminars, only one really struck me as truly novel – and that was a seminar which was the brain child of Craig Ball, who gave the session with my John and Tim Opsitnick at Georgetown's recent E-Discovery Conference.

The session truly dissected the problems and intricacies of dealing with e-mail, which comes in many forms and flavors, but is so often the crux of what clients are looking for in e-discovery. More smoking guns are found in e-mail, active and deleted, than anywhere else. And yet, attorneys have a very limited understanding of how e-mail works and where/how to find what it is they are looking for. Do you know your "imap" from your "mapi?"  Your "pst" from your "ost?"

The audience seemed to enjoy this more advanced look at e-mail thoroughly. In a post seminar survey, only a few seemed to be deer in the headlights and another few thought they knew a lot about this subject already. The overwhelming majority thought that the level of this session was exactly right and that they learned a great deal.

Honestly, there was a good bit I didn't know that these three charming and brilliant technologists taught me. And that got me to thinking . . . there really seems to be a tendency to retread e-discovery seminars over and over, without bringing fresh meat to the table. While I know we do need the "same old stuff" for those attorneys who are just getting their feet wet in EDD, I think we've now come far enough that conference organizers need to take a fresh look at their curriculums and offer some more advanced seminars for those who are no longer novices.

I'd write more, but my glass is empty. And it is now safe for me to handle the bottle.

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