Doug Austin & eDiscovery Today

Many years ago, Doug Austin and I worked several corporate and criminal defense matters together. I was happy to see Doug launch eDiscoveryToday.com during all the Pandemic chaos. He dedicates the time and networks to publish daily eDiscovery news, bringing us all content that we do not have the time to run down.

“When you set the expectation of a daily blog, you have to deliver a daily blog. It has evolved into a crowdsourced content source with all the partner and contributed content. I am focusing on educational content to get the blog to where it does not have to me all me, all the time.”

ILTACON 2022 Impressions

Prior to ILTACON, Doug generated an interesting wordcloud that highlighted some of the trends. He called out the focus on educational sessions and the surprising high attendance. Apparently last minute attendees were turned away because ILTACON was at max capacity. Overall he said that it felt like a pre-Pandemic conference. The eDiscovery exhibitor booths were relatively sparse, mostly showing the market leaders. He did note that there were less corporate speakers and attendees in the crowds.

“This was the first one I’ve attended where felt just like it always has been in terms of attendance, social events, happy hours, sessions and the whole 9 yards. It was surprising and makes me hopeful. It felt like less than 20 eDiscovery exhibitors. Really shows who felt confident enough to commit to the conference after so much prior event uncertainty.”

Session and Social Topics

Doug said that the show had pretty strong eDiscovery curriculum and content with a focus on A.I. and cybersecurity. He called out Rachi Messing and Candy Smith’s Microsoft Purview eDiscovery session for getting deep in the weeds. He heard a lot of Alex Jones/Secret Service buzz in social settings and a few sessions actually referenced them. That connected with a recent white paper on eDiscovery project management and disasters he just published.

He highlighted the common mobile device content thread. Many people do not know how to handle mobile devices and they need practical options that are not as intrusive or costly as forensics. We chatted about how high publicity eDiscovery errors are forcing companies and firms to engage with data sources they have previously avoided.

“I’m covering several cases that are ultimately about complex sources and production forms. The judge in the Salesforce case actually made the company go back and do screenshots of the Salesforce UI because the Excel dump did not present the kinds of performance information that the plaintiff had had presented. Made them give that apples to apples comparison even after they dumped the raw data.” 

Chasing Evolving Data Sources & Types

“I’m covering a lot more authentication cases because there’s so many different data sources. Even had one have to pull from the Way Back Machine. People aren’t sure exactly what courts are going to accept. The modern attachments came up last year in the Nichols v. Noom  case. It didn’t occur to them that all these attachments were G-Suite cloud links.”

Where did the data privacy go?

“I was shocked that there weren’t really any data privacy sessions. People weren’t talking about it other than some context around using A.I. technology to deals with PII and related. We are four plus years since GDPR and a couple since the CCPA. While there have been some notable GDPR fines it has not been hammering companies compared to the cyber breaches we see everywhere. Even eDiscovery companies getting hit in the last couple months.”

What else is going on?

Doug had a EDRM webinar on Purview eDiscovery  Focusing on data collections from M365. I was happy to see that eDiscovery Today formed an educational partnership with UnitedLex. Congratulations to my friend for stepping out on his own during uncertain times and growing a successful publication portal.

Greg Buckles wants your feedback, questions or project inquiries at Greg@eDJGroupInc.com. Contact him directly for a free 15 minute ‘Good Karma’ call. He solves problems and creates eDiscovery solutions for enterprise and law firm clients.

Greg’s blog perspectives are personal opinions and should not be interpreted as a professional judgment or advice. Greg is no longer a journalist and all perspectives are based on best public information. Blog content is neither approved nor reviewed by any providers prior to being published. Do you want to share your own perspective? Greg is looking for practical, professional informative perspectives free of marketing fluff, hidden agendas or personal/product bias. Outside blogs will clearly indicate the author, company and any relevant affiliations. 

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