The Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat will be a premier resource for industry practitioners who wish to focus on the complexities and practicalities of eDiscovery. Whether you’re new to eDiscovery, or want to increase your existing expertise, the retreat will allow you to explore this critical topic with established industry leaders and your peers – all in one of the most stunningly beautiful areas of the United States, Carmel, California.  Earn CLE credit hours while you get away from the hustle and bustle of the daily grind in one of California’s most pristine destinations.

The Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat will offer participants opportunities to interact personally with industry experts in a collegial atmosphere.  The retreat has been developed with an emphasis on breakout sessions and workshops, tailored to the needs of attendees. Your entire team can participate and explore the latest issues affecting the industry, and develop strategic directions.

To give you a taste of what’s in store, here’s a short list of confirmed speakers:

• Hon. James Smith (Ret). – JAMS ADR
• George Socha, Owner – Socha Consulting LLC
• Browning Marean, Senior Counsel – DLA Piper
• Diane Barry, Dir. of Discovery Strategy & Management – ILS-IPP
• Martha Dawson, Partner – K&L Gates LLP
• Jeffrey Ritter, Founder & CEO -Waters Edge Consulting LLC
• Bill Hamilton, Partner – Quarles & Brady LLP
• Robert Owen, Partner – Fulbright & Jaworski
• Amy Longo, Partner – O’Melveny & Myers LLP
• Jeff Fowler, Counsel – O’Melveny & Myers LLP
• Gareth Evans, Partner – Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
• Patrick Mullin, Partner – Jackson Lewis
• Eric Sinrod, Partner – Duane Morris LLP
• Greg Buckles, Consultant – Reason-eD, LLC
• Troy Dunham, Senior Electronic Discovery Manager – Cooley LLP
• Ruth Hauswirth, Dir of Litigation & eDiscovery Services – Cooley LLP
• Trent Livingston, Partner – Geekly Group

With its spectacular setting, a full agenda of formal and informal learning, scheduled social events, and family-friendly amenities, you won’t want to miss the Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat. We invite you to explore our website, contact us with questions, and get involved in the eDiscovery community today.

Please visit: www.carmelvalleyediscoveryretreat.com

Will any one of you admit to owning/having played this game?  It strikes me as so odd that it seems impossible that it could be successful.  To the litigation cave!

From Gizmodo:

The Phoenix Wright franchise deserves a lot of credit for sticking to one of the least appealing-sounding concepts in game history. So anyway, here goes: Phoenix Wright, the comedic litigation game, is in the App Store for $5. Oh dear.

But no, really, Phoenix Wright is a great concept: You play as a defense attorney who, along with a wide cast of characters, investigate and try cases. It’s impressive that Capcom managed to figure out a game mechanism—the point-and-click adventure game, weirdly enough—that can make this concept remotely plausible, and even more impressive that the series, which has actually become somewhat sprawling as of late, is consistently funny.

Gizmodo – Phoenix Wright Comes to the iPhone

From Law.com:

The results of the first phase of a closely watched federal court pilot program on electronic discovery show that having a set of fair-play rules at the outset of a case helps quell pretrial brawls between parties.

The goal of the program, launched in May 2009 and spearheaded by James Holderman, chief judge of the Northern District of Illinois, was to find ways to reduce the massive costs and burdens of electronic discovery. Chairing the program is Magistrate Judge Jan Nolan, also of the Northern District of Illinois.

The first-phase of the 7th Circuit’s pilot program indicated that when judges and attorneys had a set of specific principles to guide electronic discovery, it improved the process — or, at least, didn’t make it worse.

“It was very encouraging,” said Holderman.

The first phase of the program involved 13 district court judges overseeing 93 civil cases and 285 attorneys between October 2009 and March 2010. The program required the judges and attorneys to follow a set of principles, drafted by the program’s committee members, during electronic discovery.

Law.com – Federal Pilot Program Curbs E-Discovery Fights

From INFOcus:

From its advent fifteen years ago with the growth of word processing and email, the eDiscovery industry has evolved substantially and not unlike many other relatively similar technology industries like internet security and networking, from birth as a subset of the much older discovery process (which eDiscovery has come to dominate) through childhood and adolescence and into adulthood.  So just how “old” is eDiscovery?  And where is it headed from here?

Using these ancillary industries as guideposts offers some salient comparisons, albeit on an expedited basis as technological innovations continue to accelerate change inside and outside of the workplace – a byproduct of Moore’s law which produces exponential advances in all things related to computing hardware (which is almost everything these days).  At the risk of oversimplifying things, we have divided the life of eDiscovery into 4 distinct stages and equated each to the human lifespan: infancy/childhood, adolescence/teenage years, adulthood, and what we’ll respectfully call “seniority.”  Using these admittedly crude demarcations, we believe eDiscovery is in the process of graduating from college, full of promise and ready to “get serious”, but not quite sure what it will become when it grows up.

INFOcus – eDiscovery Graduates from College

It’s been a year since I started posting on Gabe’s Guide.  Things have gone very well for me in the past year, so the only logical conclusion to reach is that this blog has changed my life!  Happy blog-iversary, Internet.   Here’s to another year of me picking out e-discovery stories that merit your attention and occasionally posting random off-topic stuff.

Love and Kisses,

Ed