Legalweek 2023 continued yesterday with the first full day of events! Here are the notable Wednesday Legalweek 2023 sessions and events!

Legalweek 2023 will be conducted Monday through Thursday. Once again, it will be held at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York City. It is a fully in-person event again this year. Here’s the detailed agenda for the conference (on which I generated a word cloud of topics two weeks ago). And here is what eDiscovery Today partners will be doing this week!

You can still register for Legalweek 2023 here and the pricing is here. Each day, I’ll cover what’s going on at the conference in terms of sessions related to eDiscovery, information governance, cybersecurity, data privacy and artificial intelligence – so much so, I’d have to clone myself to catch them all!

Sessions

With that in mind, here’s a list of the Wednesday Legalweek 2023 sessions of note you may want to check out, along with the location (all times ET):

9:00 AM – 9:30 AM 

State of the Industry (Grand Ballroom)

The Legalweek State of the Industry, presented annually by ALM Intelligence, leverages data, insight, and analysis to provide a holistic assessment of the current state of the global legal market. From examining key trends and risks to identifying where opportunity lies moving forward, the presentation brings together a diverse range of perspectives from all areas of the legal market. This includes law firms and legal departments as well as alternative legal service providers and legal tech.

Speakers: Heather Nevitt, Editor-in-Chief, Corporate Counsel, Inside Counsel and Global Leaders in Law, ALM; Patrick Fuller, Vice President & General Manager, ALM Intelligence.

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM

Legalweek Judges’ Debate Goes Primetime (Grand Ballroom)

How do you rule?  Back by popular demand in the coveted day two keynote spot, the Judges’ Debate will pit some of our nation’s top discovery jurists against one another in oral argument.  Where our honorable judges play litigators and attendees write the orders, the debate will be Legalweek’s most interactive program.  Patrick Oot and the ALM Legalweek research team are pouring over dockets to locate the “cases that count” to craft our alliterative hypotheticals that will underscore principles of ethics, procedure and evidence. The cases also will be highlighted in the Q&A audience debrief.  Who will have the bragging rights as this year’s champions?  Only you will decide!

Speakers: Hon. Willie J Epps, Jr, United States Magistrate Judge, US District Court for the Western District of Missouri; Hon. Andrew Peck, Senior Counsel, DLA Piper; Patrick Oot, Partner, Shook, Hardy & Bacon, LLP – Washington, DC; Hon. Charmiane Claxton, United States Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court – Western District of Tennessee; Hon. Xavier Rodriguez, U.S. District Judge, U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas.

11:30 AM – 12:30 PM

e-Discovery in the News: Legal and Media Perspectives (Sutton North)

From the data of Elon Musk to the texts of Alex Jones, e-discovery has become a big story in the news. With perspectives from the worlds of law and journalism, join us as we examine the e-discovery law issues and the cases that have become major media stories, including topics such as waiver of the attorney-client privilege, preservation of potential evidence, and the varied data sources making e-discovery challenging and, at times, newsworthy. In addition, we’ll examine how e-discovery matters can end up in the news and the potential pitfalls.

Speakers: David Horrigan, Discovery Counsel and Legal Education Director, Relativity; Tanya R. Kennedy, Associate Justice, Appellate Division, First Department, Supreme Court of the State of New York; Isha Marathe, Legal Technology Reporter, Legaltech News, ALM Media; Joe Patrice, Senior Editor, Above the Law; Stephanie Wilkins, Editor-in-Chief, Legaltech News, ALM.

Everything You Wanted to Know about eDiscovery AI (But Were Too Afraid to Ask) (Sutton Center)

At every conference someone asks, “what is AI?” and “how does it apply in eDiscovery”? Our panelists have the answers, and they’ll share them with you – not by trotting out some dry academic definition but via example. By the time this session is done, you too will be able to answer those questions with confidence.

Speakers: Toni Millican, Director Customer Success, Reveal Brainspace; Diane Diaz, eDiscovery Manager, Commercial Litigation Practice Group, McDonald’s Corporation; David Yerich, Director of eDiscovery, UnitedHealth Group; Dave Rogers, Managing Director, Kroll; Caroline Sweeney, Dir. KM, Innovation & E-Discovery, Dorsey & Whitney LLP.

Case Law Update 2023 (Petit Trianon)

Join this session as our experts outline the most prominent cases dominating 2023, how they will impact the law going forward and big cases that are likely to hit the docket soon.

Speakers: Philip Favro, Special Master, Expert Witness & Principal Consultant, Innovative Driven; Jeremiah Wikler, Partner, Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P.; Florence Yee, Vice President & Corporate Counsel, Enterprise Litigation Group, Prudential Financial, Inc.; Kelli Stenstrom, Associate General Counsel, Global Head of Legal eDiscovery, Deutsche Bank AG, NY Branch; Erick Drobinski, Head of Legal Technology and Operations, Gilead Sciences.

Structuring Investigations to Guarantee Efficiency and Success in Every Scenario (Nassau East)

Investigations that sift through millions of documents to find the answers to critical questions are all too commonplace in every aspect of enterprise operations today. And with increasingly demanding deadlines, speed to accurate insight is paramount. Join this session as we reveal the essential components of an ESI investigation that will ensure a universal meticulous, expeditious resolution traversing the spectrum of corporate legal scenarios.

• Discover the foundational building blocks to ensuring a thorough and consistent ESI investigation;
• Understand how to combine people, process, and technology to rapidly and confidently identify and isolate the pertinent documents;
• Explore the application of ESI investigation techniques in various operational situations, such as litigation, compliance and M&A.

Speakers: Thomas Gricks, Lead Strategy Consultant, OpenText; Tracy Drynan, Principal Consultant, OpenText; Robert Keeling, Partner, Sidley Austin.

Proactive perspectives: Navigating the challenges of alternate data types in eDiscovery (Trianon Ballroom)

Okta’s 2023 Businesses at Work report reveals that companies with 2,000+ employees now deploy an average of 211 apps, marking a 24-app increase from last year. Even smaller companies tend to use over 90 apps. While not all of these apps will contain relevant information for eDiscovery, they do point to a growing concern for in-house teams, law firms, and service providers: how to handle the ever-increasing amount of content, collaboration, and chat data. Legal teams must adapt to this trend and learn the best practices for managing the systems powering their business, whether it’s emoji-laden messages in Slack or Teams, Confluence wiki pages, or Zoom meeting recordings.

Join our panel of experts, including both in-house practitioners and outside counsel, to:

• Explore the risks, challenges, and opportunities of working with alternate data sources and types across all stages of the EDRM
• Discuss case law that indicates a new norm is emerging and how law firms are strategizing to best support their clients
• Learn how to adapt your information governance and eDiscovery process to accommodate the influx of new data types

Speakers: Kelly Twigger, CEO, eDiscovery Assistant; Pedro de Lencastre, Customer Success Director, Onna; Sharika de Freitas, Legal Technology Executive, Paramount; James Sherer, Partner, BakerHostetler.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Data Protection is a Team Sport: Creating Synergy Between Security and Legal (Beekman)

Data is everywhere! Hybrid world of work is creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day – being stored, shared, and accessed through many devices and networks. To understand your risk, it’s critical to consider context across files, people, apps, and devices. An effective data protection strategy provides organizations with a proactive method to minimizing the risk of cyber threats and data exfiltration. Join us to discuss a defense and depth approach to keeping your most important asset – your data – safe, wherever it lives and travels.

• Understand the defense and depth approach to data protection
• Optimize the balance between security and productivity
• How leveraging an integrated set of tools across data protection and eDiscovery can help drive efficiency

Speakers: Stefanie Bier, Principal Product Manager, Microsoft; Trena Patton, Director of Product Management, Epiq; Brad Smith, Managing Director, Edgile, a Wipro Company.

All Rights Reversed: Dissecting Novel Legal Issues in Generative AI (Sutton North)

The emergence of generative AI – from ChatGPT to Dall-E 2 – is arguably the preeminent technological breakthrough of our time. OpenAI’s jaw-dropping valuation, reportedly at $29 billion, is an indication of generative AI’s potential to reimagine and remake entire businesses – from art, advertising, and publishing to online search, software development, and education.

But as generative AI models – trained on staggering volumes of data in the public domain – begin to gain widespread adoption, lawmakers and jurists will be forced to contend with legal issues over the commercialization of these models. For example, consider the recently proposed class action lawsuit against Microsoft, OpenAI, and GitHub for building a product using an AI model that had allegedly been trained on open-source code protected by copyright.

Join us for an exciting discussion that will touch on the rise of generative AI, contentious issues at the intersection of AI and intellectual property law, and generative AI’s larger ramifications for the legal industry.

Speakers: Omar Haroun, Head of AI Strategy, Relativity; Farrah Pepper, Chief Legal Innovation Counsel, Marsh McLennan; Josh Kreamer, Head of Legal Services, AstraZeneca; Alisa Melekhina, Senior Litigation Associate, Debevoise & Plimpton.

Why I Went All-in-on-AI and How You Can Too (Sutton Center)

AI in legal and eDiscovery has seen a massive surge in adoption. Learn from top eDiscovery luminaries and how they drove adoption. Hear about their in-the-trenches experiences, the challenges they overcame, and how they measured success. Gather practical tips about how to bring Ai into your firm or in-house practice and how to extend the use of active learning to all (or almost all) matters.

Speakers: Florinda Baldridge, Director, Global eDiscovery Services, Norton Rose Fulbright; Sam Sessler, Assistant Director, Global eDiscovery Services, Norton Rose Fulbright; Melissa Heidrick, Manager, eDiscovery and Litigation Technology, Norton Rose Fulbright; Emily Collins, Information Governance Attorney, Southwest Airlines; Jared Hargrave, Senior Manager, Discovery Analytics, Norton Rose Fulbright; Patrick Bilgere, VP-DB, Reveal Brainspace.

Perfecting the Partnership: Optimizing the Division of Labor in eDiscovery Workstreams (Petit Trianon)

As the tried-and-true eDiscovery methods stretch to accommodate data volumes that were beyond imagination just several years ago, practitioners are creatively embracing new paths to the same finish line. Advanced capabilities are lighting up where data originates, providing new opportunities to maximize efficiency in the eDiscovery process. Hear from three forward-thinking experts on how they’re collaborating in new ways to deliver success for their clients beyond the status quo.

• Learn how in-place tools can be securely run by external experts to deliver the same service and process excellence on their clients’ behalf.
• Consider new ways to balance the needs of the case while reducing the security risks of over-collection, with creative methods to validate targeted collections and reduce downstream processing time and expense. The quickest path does not always have the fewest steps.
• With shrinking budgets and resources, learn how to do more with less, maximizing the value of all technologies available in your combined toolkit.

Speakers: E.J. Bastien, Director of Discovery Programs, Microsoft; Reem Saffouri, VP, Client Solutions & Success, Lighthouse eDiscovery; Robert Keeling, Partner, Sidley Austin.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM

The Nexus between Discovery, Security, and Privacy (Beekman)

The connection between Discovery, Security and Privacy is evolving, as new regulations materialize, and the threat landscape expands. Join this session to hear from legal professionals on how Privacy and Security is front and center, to support and manage eDiscovery at Microsoft as well as other organizations.

• Consider how Privacy and Security should be front and center in your eDiscovery processes.
• Learn about the connection between Security, Privacy and Discovery, and how managing data can impact your organization.
• Uncover the resources available to make the most of your technology investments with Microsoft.

Speakers: Jon Monheit, Lead eDiscovery Program Manager, Microsoft; Caitlin Fitzgerald, Sr Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft; Susana Medeiros, Associate, Norton Rose Fulbright.

Collaboration Tools: The Challenges and Opportunities Facing e-Discovery (Sutton North)

The world of short message communication and collaboration is evolving more rapidly than ever before, and the e-discovery industry is faced with a challenge – what should we be focused on when it comes to short message data and how do we review and produce it? Relativity’s Cristin Traylor will lead a discussion on these challenges and the opportunities to efficiently and effectively manage short message data.

Speakers: E.J. Bastien, Director of Discovery Programs, Microsoft; Matthew Rasmussen, CEO, ModeOne Technologies; Cristin Traylor, Director Law Firm Strategy Marketing, Relativity; Martha Louks, Director of Technology Services, McDermott Will & Emery.

Choose Your Own Adventure with Custom AI Models (Sutton Center)

Savvy legal technologists are not merely using AI, they are customizing and supercharging it to fit their needs. Learn from professionals at the cutting edge about how they are developing custom Ai models, the powerful use cases for those models, and how you can embrace your inner data scientist to build the Ai models you need (without having to learn lambda calculus).

This session will include:

• An AI model showcase, with panelists presenting the best models they have built
• Practical tips for using AI models to build and expand business
• A step-by-step breakdown of the AI model-building process

Speakers: George Socha, SVP of Brand Awareness, Reveal; Irina Matveeva, Chief Data Scientist, Reveal; Ilan Sherr, Executive Director, Aiscension, DLA Piper / Aiscension; Daryl Teshima, Senior Managing Director, FTI Consulting; Todd Marlin, Global Forensic Technology & Innovation Leader, EY.

Beyond the AI Hype: Key Emerging Use Cases Impacting Information Governance, Ediscovery and Data Disclosure (Mercury Ballroom)

In this fast-evolving business landscape, companies have started using AI-enabled tools to identify trends and insights into evidence that could not necessarily be surfaced through human review alone. Everyone says they have AI tools, but what does that really mean and how does it impact ediscovery? In this session, panelists will dig into how they expect new trends in AI will improve how we conduct data identification, discovery, document review, and document production in the near future.                                                                                     

This discussion will cover, among other things:

• How organizations and litigants can strategically leverage AI models in their information governance, discovery and litigation.
• The role of sentiment analysis in understanding positive-negative-mixed-neutral case data more quickly and thoroughly.
• How to cut through the marketing copy and truly leverage data analytics to measure the effectiveness of your practice.

The panel will look to dive into the reasons AI and advanced analytics tools have become top requested features for legal professionals, explore how they are being used in legal work today, and educate the audience on why these critical new technologies will continue to see high adoption across the legal sector over the next few years.

Speakers: Kristin Zmrhal, Vice President, DISCO; James Sherer, Partner, BakerHostetler; Fletcher Strong, Counsel, Wollmuth Maher & Deutsch LLP; Meghan Landrum, Director, Head of Discovery and Legal Data Management, Google.

Finding the Story Between the Lines (Trianon Ballroom)

By using new approaches to visualizing multiple forms of data with machine learning and better search capabilities, ediscovery professionals can now understand more at a glance than ever before. This panel will look at how new approaches to legacy search and use of artificial intelligence is reshaping the way ediscovery is done and takes a look into the future about what is yet to come.

Speakers: Alex Hafez, Director of Solution Architecture, Everlaw; Lisa Fabian, Director of E-Discovery Solutions, Hanson Bridgett; Tyler O’Halloran, Partner, Allensworth Law; Stephanie Scharf, Partner, Scharf Banks.

In addition to today’s Legalweek 2023 sessions, there will be one last night of happy hours and events. It’s a Legalweek tradition!

So, what do you think?  Are you attending Legalweek 2023 this week? If so and if you see me, say hi!  And please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the authors and speakers themselves, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.