Socha’s Weekly Trend Report – August 10, 2020

Notes on recent trends in e-discovery, data privacy, and the use of technology to enhance the practice of law

Published August 10, 2020 on the ACEDS Blog. Full lists are at Trends and Industry Events.

Announcements

Categories	Date	Entries
Announcements, Enhancing Practice	08/10/2020	American Legal Technology announced the finalists for its inaugural American Legal Technology Awards, reported Bob Ambrogi of Law Sites and Richard Tromans of Artificial Lawyer.
Announcements, Enhancing Practice	08/06/2020	ROSS Intelligence released an extension for the Chrome web browser that lets one highlight text anywhere online and search for related legal authority, reported Bob Ambrogi of LawSites.
Announcements, E-Discovery	08/06/2020	Relativity announced that voting has opened for its Innovation Awards 2020. There are 12 finalists in four categories open to community voting: Attorney Tech Evangelist, Corporate Tech Evangelist, Lit Support All-Star, and Stellar Women in e-Discovery.
Announcements, E-Discovery	08/05/2020	Xact Data Discovery (XDD) announced the acquisition of UK-based e-discovery services provider Anexsys Group Limited.
Announcements, E-Discovery	08/04/2020	HaystackID and NightOwl Global announced the combining of the companies as part of a merger facilitated by majority investor market private equity firm, Quad-C Management, Inc. The combined company will operate under the HaystackID brand, as noted in the HaystackID Merger FAQs.
Announcements, Enhancing Practice	08/04/2020	ILTA announced the finalists for the 2020 Distinguished Peer Awards program. Winners will be announced throughout ILTA>ON (August 24 – 28, 2020).
Announcements, E-Discovery	08/03/2020	Logikcull announced InHouse, a one-day, peer-led users conference for in-house leaders.

E-discovery

Categories	Date	Entries
Announcements, E-Discovery	08/06/2020	Relativity announced that voting has opened for its Innovation Awards 2020. There are 12 finalists in four categories open to community voting: Attorney Tech Evangelist, Corporate Tech Evangelist, Lit Support All-Star, and Stellar Women in e-Discovery.
E-Discovery, Enhancing Practice	08/06/2020	Five ways corporate legal departments are evaluating their relationships with ALSPs, reported Frank Ready of Legaltech News, are: Cautiously exploring legal managed services, particularly for e-discovery and litigation; Showing greater interest in buying outcomes (the ALSP route) instead of technology; Seeking recommendations from trusted colleagues; Becoming more confident in the ability of ALSPs to successfully execute tasks such as contract review, e-discovery, and due diligence; and Looking to who can better handle more complex work, with law firms still having the advantage.
Announcements, E-Discovery	08/05/2020	Xact Data Discovery (XDD) announced the acquisition of UK-based e-discovery services provider Anexsys Group Limited.
E-Discovery	08/05/2020	Herb Roitblat of Mimecast has written a paper, Is there something I’m missing? Topic Modeling in eDiscovery, noted Rob Robinson of Complex Discovery, in which Herb argues that discovery should be based on identifying the relevant facts of a case rather than on identifying all the documents containing those relevant facts.
Announcements, E-Discovery	08/04/2020	HaystackID and NightOwl Global announced the combining of the companies as part of a merger facilitated by majority investor market private equity firm, Quad-C Management, Inc. The combined company will operate under the HaystackID brand, as noted in the HaystackID Merger FAQs.
E-Discovery	08/04/2020	Stacey Solliday of Relativity discussed and displayed navigational changes coming this month with the rollout of Aero UI in Relativity One.
E-Discovery, Privacy	08/03/2020	In the first of two Law Journal Newsletter articles, Jared Coseglia of TRU Staffing Partners discussed the state of the the e-discovery and data privacy job markets, pre and post COVID-10.
E-Discovery	08/03/2020	Ari Kaplan of Ari Kaplan Advisors reflected on e-discovery trends in a Law Journal Newsletter article. Based on recent interviews with 27 e-discovery decisions makers, Ari concluded that e-discovery is expanding, particularly in the use of analytics, the impact of AI, and challenges from complex data types' corporations and law firm are investing in software, training, data mapping, and automation; law departments continue to move e-discovery in-house; use of remote document review and cloud-based systems is growing and privacy is having its impact; and clients continue to want high-quality providers to work with.
Announcements, E-Discovery	08/03/2020	Logikcull announced InHouse, a one-day, peer-led users conference for in-house leaders.

Enhancing practice

Categories	Date	Entries
Announcements, Enhancing Practice	08/10/2020	American Legal Technology announced the finalists for its inaugural American Legal Technology Awards, reported Bob Ambrogi of Law Sites and Richard Tromans of Artificial Lawyer.
Announcements, Enhancing Practice	08/06/2020	ROSS Intelligence released an extension for the Chrome web browser that lets one highlight text anywhere online and search for related legal authority, reported Bob Ambrogi of LawSites.
Enhancing Practice	08/06/2020	Thomson Reuters published its 2020 State of Corporate Law Departments, which looks at three strategic priorities: improving functional effectiveness, increasing efficiency, and safeguarding the company.
E-Discovery, Enhancing Practice	08/06/2020	Five ways corporate legal departments are evaluating their relationships with ALSPs, reported Frank Ready of Legaltech News, are: Cautiously exploring legal managed services, particularly for e-discovery and litigation; Showing greater interest in buying outcomes (the ALSP route) instead of technology; Seeking recommendations from trusted colleagues; Becoming more confident in the ability of ALSPs to successfully execute tasks such as contract review, e-discovery, and due diligence; and Looking to who can better handle more complex work, with law firms still having the advantage.
Enhancing Practice	08/06/2020	Analyzing the results of Altman Weil's Law Firms in Transition 2020 flash survey, which reports on large law firm trends, in the second of two posts Ron Friedmann examined alternative staffing, efficiency initiatives, and pricing.
Enhancing Practice	08/05/2020	California attorney Erin Levine has begun to take her award-winning do-it-yourself divorce platform Hello Divorce nation-wide, reported Bob Ambrogi of LawSites, initially expanding from California into Colorado and then Utah and Texas.
Enhancing Practice	08/05/2020	ALSPs continue to be threat to than partner with law firms, reported Frank Ready of Legaltech News. One way to address that threat, reported Dan Packel, also of Legaltech News, is for law firms to learn how to collaborate with ALSPs.
Enhancing Practice	08/05/2020	Zach Warren of Legaltech News looked into what is meant by the phrase "New Law": a marketing phrase? Something you only know when you see it? Strategic positioning? The bottom line: it appears there is not yet a consensus.
Enhancing Practice	08/05/2020	To get a sense of what GPT-3 can (and cannot) do, look at Legaltech is "full of hype", says GPT-3. The article was written entirely by GPT-3 and published by Genie AI.
Announcements, Enhancing Practice	08/04/2020	ILTA announced the finalists for the 2020 Distinguished Peer Awards program. Winners will be announced throughout ILTA>ON (August 24 – 28, 2020).
Enhancing Practice	08/03/2020	EY Law published the results of a new survey it performed, Realizing the benefits of legal managed services, reported Victoria Hudgins of Legaltech News. Cornelius Grossman and Nicholas Bruch of EY added further thoughts in a Bloomberg Law article.
Enhancing Practice	08/03/2020	The most recent issue of The Practice, a publication from Harvard Law School's Center on the Legal Profession, contained six articles on remote courts: The Future of Courts, by Richard Susskind The Doctor Will See You: What telehealth can teach us about remote courts Separating the People from the Problem: Colin Rule and the rise of online dispute resolution Public Trials: In Brief: Remote courts as public spaces Not Remotely the Same: In the News: What happens to the law school clinic? What Carries Over? Speaker’s Corner: Richard Susskind and Jonathan Zittrain on remote courts and the future of justice
Enhancing Practice	08/03/2020	Caroline Hill of Legal IT Insider summed up her discussions with a raft of senior legal technologists about the potential impact of GPT-3 on the legal sector: what GPT-3 is; who in the legal sector has their hands on it; it's potential relevance to the legal sector; issues of privacy, confidentiality, and bias; and finally whether it is hype or a game changer.

Privacy

Categories	Date	Entries
Privacy	08/07/2020	The FTC plans to “continue to hold companies accountable for their privacy commitments, including privacy promises made under the Privacy Shield”, despite the Schrems II decision invalidating the Privacy Shield framework, reported Buckley LLP.
E-Discovery, Privacy	08/03/2020	In the first of two Law Journal Newsletter articles, Jared Coseglia of TRU Staffing Partners discussed the state of the the e-discovery and data privacy job markets, pre and post COVID-10.

E-discovery case law

Date	Posture	Outcome	Entries
07/16/2020	Defendants' appeal of district court's imposition of judgment as spoliation sanction.	District court decision affirmed.	QueTel Corporation v. Abbas, No. 18-2334 (4th Cir. July 16, 2020) In an unpublished per curiam opinion, appellate judges Gregory, Keenan and Thacker affirmed a district court's judgment that awarded judgment to plaintiff-appellee as a sanction for defendants' spoliation of evidence and imposed a permanent injunction against defendants. Four months after plaintiffs sent defendants a cease-and-desist letter notifying them of potential litigation, one of the defendants, a former employee of plaintiff, destroyed a computer used to develop software at issue in the case. Defendants did not disclose the destruction until confronted by plaintiff. Defendants also deleted a source code control system and a considerable amount of files related to the dispute from the replacement computer in the middle of the parties' discovery disputes over the existence of such a system. Accepting a recommendation from the magistrate judge, the district court found that the cease-and-desist letter put defendants on notice and invoked a duty to preserve, that the defendants intentionally destroyed evidence in bad faith with the intent to deprive plaintiff of the evidence's use in the lawsuit, that plaintiff had been irreparably harmed, that a jury instruction was an insufficient remedy, and that as a result judgment should be imposed as a sanction against defendants. Examining the situation, the appellate court found no abuse of discretion in the district court's decision.

Additional articles

Categories	Date	Entries
Additional Articles, E-Discovery	08/05/2020	How to Unravel the Story in Your Legal Matters with Cooperative Technology Source: Relativity Author: Sam Bock
Additional Articles, E-Discovery	08/05/2020	Lessons Learned: Destroying Relevant Evidence Can Be Catastrophic in Litigation Source: Legaltech News Authors: Michael W. Mitchell and Edward Roche (Smith Anderson)

Upcoming events

Categories	Types	Dates	Times	Entries