My colossal blunder from two days ago did ultimately lead to a terrific benefit – discussing access to justice then and now with two of my favorite people in eDiscovery!
The discussion on access to justice then and now involved David Horrigan, Discovery Counsel & Legal Education Director at Relativity, and Tom O’Connor, the Director of the Gulf Coast Legal Technology Center. Though it may not have happened without my colossal blunder. Here’s that colossal blunder in a nutshell:
I was coordinating with Nick Wittenberg of Deloitte on a guest post he was writing for eDiscovery Today (which was published Monday), when he mentioned the access to justice panel last week at Relativity Fest that David moderated. Nick mentioned how great it was, and he provided a link to a blog post from Tom that I thought was about last week’s discussion. I checked out the post and thought it was a really good post, so I decided to cover it for eDiscovery Today. The post went live Tuesday morning, and I followed up with social media posts about it shortly after that.
A few minutes later, I’m on the treadmill and I get a call from David, who of course was mentioned in the blog post and tagged in the social media posts, and I think: “No big deal. I’ll call him back after I’m done on the treadmill”. Then, I get a voice mail message from David. Then, I get a text message from David and I realize he really wants to tell me something.
The text message from David informs me that the session I wrote about happened six years ago, not last week.
“Holy crap”, I say (though, technically I didn’t say “crap”) and I suspend my treadmill walk, get on my computer and proceed to delete the social media posts promoting my blog post. I almost deleted my blog post too but decided instead to put a “mea culpa” message at the top to explain what happened.
Both Nick’s email to me and Tom’s blog post made it clear that his post was six years old – I simply missed it. Doh! 😮
So, how can I turn self-inflicted lemons into lemonade, I thought? By inviting David and Tom to discuss the topic of access to justice (which they graciously accepted on short notice), discuss the two RelFest sessions about it six years apart that David moderated and that Tom attended, and to what extent access to justice has progressed over that time.
The result was a discussion on access to justice then and now, which was absolutely terrific. Both David and Tom had great insights to share – about the two RelFest sessions, about the participants involved in both sessions and their contributions to helping address the issue, and about current trends and challenges associated with access to justice.
Below is the video of that discussion, or you can access it here as well. Thanks to David and Tom for their participation in such a busy week, and for a terrific and informative discussion!
BTW, speaking of RelFest, check out David’s write-up on the Best of Relativity Fest 2023 here, with notable quotes from several participants, including me!
So, what do you think? Where do you think we stand regarding the current state of access to justice? 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 author, 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.