Here’s the kitchen sink for April 26, 2024 of ten stories that I didn’t get to this week – with another brand-new meme from Gates Dogfish!
Why “the kitchen sink”? Find out here! 🙂
The Kitchen Sink is even better when you can include a brand-new eDiscovery meme courtesy of Gates Dogfish, the meme channel dedicated to eDiscovery people and created by Aaron Patton of Trustpoint.One (which is now a partner of eDiscovery Today! 😀 ). For more great eDiscovery memes, follow Gates Dogfish on LinkedIn here! Holy defense lawyer, Batman! You need more “bat” training! 😀
Here is the kitchen sink for April 26, 2024 of ten stories that I didn’t get to this week, with a comment from me about each:
ComplexDiscovery Launches Spring 2024 Business Confidence Survey for eDiscovery, Cybersecurity, and Information Governance Professionals: Actually, eleven items because I’m promoting Rob Robinson’s quarterly business confidence survey on ComplexDiscovery once more this week. I encourage you to participate – the more that do, the more interesting the results will be!
Production In Original Digital Format — The New Normal: A good in-depth discussion of eDiscovery production formats from Stephanie Mills of Cassels, Brock, and Blackwell, LLP. The title may call original digital format “the new normal”, but we’re not there yet – close to half of ILTA survey respondents (41%) still produce data using TIFF / Text files with metadata load files (and some portion of 36% still produce PDF files). Will articles like this change things? I hope so.
From Centaurs To Cyborgs: Our evolving relationship with generative AI: Ralph Losey is nothing if not committed – he tried 118 times to create a picture of a half robot Centaur using Dall-E and Midjourney. And he informs us in this post on the EDRM blog that “The word was first coined in 1960 (before StarTrek) by two dreamy AI scientists who combined the root words CYBernetic and ORGanism to describe a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts.” I’ll be back.
The American Privacy Rights Act of 2024: Balancing Innovation and Consumer Protection: Rob Robinson provides a detailed breakdown of this law – proposed at this point.
Cops allowed to force suspect to unlock cellphone with thumbprint: Court: The Ninth Circuit threw out Jeremy Travis Payne’s constitutional challenges to the admissibility of evidence collected after highway cops forced Payne to unlock his phone with his thumbprint. Even though Payne was “under the thumb” of law enforcement in this case doesn’t mean the Court gave a “thumbs up” to law enforcement being able to do this in every case. Somebody stop me. 😀
UnitedHealth Group says it paid a ransom to protect patient data from a cyberattack: United said that a preliminary review of targeted data found files that contained protected health information and personally identifiable information, “which could cover a substantial portion of people in America.” Ruh-roh. 😮
Microsoft’s Phi-3 shows the surprising power of small, locally run AI language models: We know what LLMs are, but do you know what an SLM is? Now you do!
Deepfakes in the courtroom: US judicial panel debates new AI evidence rules: A brief recap of the latest meeting of the US Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, an eight-member panel responsible for drafting evidence-related amendments to the Federal Rules of Evidence, including presentations from experts like Judge Paul Grimm and Dr. Maura R. Grossman – who have proposed a modification to FRE Rule 901(b)(9) and also proposed a new rule, 901(c), to address deepfakes. More in the 358(!) page agenda here – the first 38 pages or so detail discussion of Grossman & Grimm’s proposed rule changes.
TRU Trends: Increase in Law Firm Hiring, Fewer Fully Remote Jobs: Detailed recap of the discussion of TRU’s 2024 eDiscovery Jobs Report by Jared Coseglia of Tru Staffing Partners and Mike Quartararo of ACEDS on the ACEDS blog. A must read if you’re looking for a job or thinking about your options.
Lawyer Facing Ethics Probe Decides Maybe Destroying His Computer Will Help. It Does Not.: According to Joe Patrice in Above the Law, New Hampshire attorney Justin Nadeau apparently thought he could get out of his troubles by destroying his computer. He could not. See, there are these people called “forensic experts” who can look through your office server. As Joe notes: “It’s the hubris of a JD to think that you’re more clever than someone who’s actually trained in the specific technical skill at issue.” 😀
25 cybersecurity AI stats you should know: Compiled from various reports for all you stat geeks out there (like me). 🙂 Here’s one: 55% of organizations plan to adopt GenAI solutions within this year, signaling a substantial surge in GenAI integration.
Hope you enjoyed the kitchen sink for April 26, 2024! Back next week with another edition!
So, what do you think? Is this useful as an end of the week wrap-up? 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.
Discover more from eDiscovery Today by Doug Austin
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.




I cannot fathom the effort to cancel (in the context of forms of ESI production) the term “native” in favor of “original digital format.” “Native” simply means “as born,” from the Latin “nativus” meaning “born.” I get that “master” implies an overlord and stinks of slavery, so farewell “master bedrooms” and hello “primary bedrooms.” But, you CAN stop referring to native peoples (in favor of “indigenous peoples”) if you like, but don’t damn and vilify Latin and cancel terms that even the Romans never associated with any flavor of subservience or inferiority.