London IQPC Conference Wrap Up (and a gripe about the cricket)
IQPC’s annual e-discovery Forum in London has always been a classy conference and again, this year, it did not disappoint. Located at Lords, the prestigious home of cricket, the conference provided a smashing opportunity for an Aussie abroad to receive an ear-full about Australia’s worst ever defeat to England a few days earlier.
It also provided an outstanding opportunity to catch-up on the latest news and industry developments.
Our conference chair, the inimitable @Chris Dale, directed a procession of fine speakers and panels that were punctuated by his erudite musings and wry anecdotes.
Accolades to the astute panel members who bravely tackled the topic of the #gdpr impact on #ediscovery with gusto. It was a privilege to chair such a lively discussion between @Shahriar Rafiei (UBS), @Kate Brimsted (Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner) and @Amie Taal (previously Deutsche Bank).
Not to mention contributions from the unflappable @James Sherer (Baker Hostetler) who delivered a brilliant opening keynote before being spontaneously roped into our panel via an exchange that went something like this:
Q: Hey James, we have a spare seat on our panel. It starts in 5 minutes. Can you join?
A: "Sure". "What's the topic?"
Yes. In that order. He agreed before he knew the topic.
Love that guy.
We will post the video and key take-aways from this panel discussion soon.
The actively represented corporations AIG, Citi Group (@Mickael Santoro), Blackberry (@David Blonder) and Vodafone (@Amanda Chandler) delivered compelling thought leadership with a range of perspectives on how their organisations are dealing with ever-evolving compliance requirements.
@Julie Heller delivered an intriguing presentation about the creative application of #ediscovery tools and methodology to data disposition at AIG.
Impressive presentations were also delivered by law firms Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (@Robin Ganguly), McCann Fitzgerald (@Karyn Harty and @Grainne Bryan) and DLA Piper (@David Webb). These firms clearly value innovation as a strategic differentiator and are prepared to challenge the norm. Each had partners, lawyers and senior executives with gravitas in attendance.
@Amie Taal, always a beacon of intellect provided an illuminating overview of AI potential for law, augmenting some visionary perspectives shared earlier by @Richard Day of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office.
The “fireside conversation” between @Karen Lust of Reed Smith and @Chris Dale was also a highlight. One could almost imagine a crackling log fire in the background as Karen provided wise and reflective advice in relation to the real-world problems that will be increasingly faced by US litigators and corporations in our post GDPR world. For example; be selective and collect less, do more on-location in the EU, find alternative sources of the data and most prophetically be ready to provide your US judge with a crash ‘Introduction to the GDPR’ course.
Industry luminary, @Karen Harty of McCann Fitzgerald boldly postulated that change that is perceived as a threat by many firms is already understood and embraced as an opportunity by the leading law firms. To that end she shared this pearl of wisdom from Shakespeare's The Tempest:
Miranda: “Oh.. wonder. O brave new world..”
Prospero: “’tis new to thee.”
This salient message dovetailed with one of the underlying themes of the conference, as articulated by @Shahriar Rafiei of UBS: “The GDPR just codifies good practice”.
It may be business as usual for a Swiss based financial firm that has long embraced privacy best practice. Perhaps not so for many non-EU organisations that are still coming to grips with the broad impact of the new regime.
A pervasive message throughout was the need to approach discovery, or, rather, disclosure, differently, for example, by conducting data processing, cull and review in-situ or at least in-country wherever possible. A theme consistent with our own views at EDT.
@Marlize Palmer from the Government of Wales, espoused pragmatic perspectives on Digital Continuity while @Pauina Jedwabska of the UK Department of Fun, as she coin phrased her catch-all agency (the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) energetically dived into the notion of “Legitimate Interest” comparing the GDPR and the UK DPA provisions with enthusiasm that was almost contagious.
@Ricardo Auhing of UBS delivered an intriguing presentation about the challenges of managing CHAT data for e-discovery and his insights were somewhat encouraging to hear about because his team’s experiences are consistent with our own AI Lab experiments in this domain. One of the underlying problems is, as he articulated so well, the intrinsic notion of a ‘document’ within e-discovery and the problems that arise when one tries to distort conversation data into such an outmoded data definition and paradigm.
@Mike Quartararo of edPM Advisory Services presented some fresh thinking with his framework for best practice project management, a methodology gleaned from decades of real world AMLAW e-discovery practice, reminding us of the core principles that really should underpin every project.
As regards the impact of GDPR on litigation, well it seems that, apart from the leading-edge firms and corporations that are already all over it or for whom it represents business as usual, there still prevails much confusion and ignorance in the legal sector.
To that end, perhaps the words of Tom Peters are poignant; “If you aren’t confused then you haven’t been paying attention”.
We greatly enjoyed this iconic event and appreciated the opportunity to participate.
Hope to see you there next year!
To check out our tweets from the conference head to @discovEDT on Twitter.
iicesummit.com #iicesummit2018 #privacy #legaltech #eDiscovery #innovation #AI