Electronic discovery is increasingly becoming a fact of life for all litigators and this conference will feature a wide array of national experts discussing how to competently and cost-effectively handle e-discovery in small and medium cases. The conference will also shed light on the latest developments in Florida and federal e-discovery rules and will feature demonstrations of the latest e-discovery software and tools for each phase of the e-discovery process, for matters ranging from the most humble lawsuit to the largest mega-case.

The conference is part of UF Law’s E-Discovery Project, and is underwritten by the International Center for Automated Information Research, a University of Florida foundation established to promote innovation in information technology. Attendees will be eligible to receive 11.5 CLE credits.

The conference is free for full-time law students and UF faculty and staff. For registration and further information, visit the E-Discovery for the Small and Medium Case website.

Electronic discovery is increasingly becoming a fact of life for all litigators and this conference will feature a wide array of national experts discussing how to competently and cost-effectively handle e-discovery in small and medium cases. The conference will also shed light on the latest developments in Florida and federal e-discovery rules and will feature demonstrations of the latest e-discovery software and tools for each phase of the e-discovery process, for matters ranging from the most humble lawsuit to the largest mega-case.

The conference is part of UF Law’s E-Discovery Project, and is underwritten by the International Center for Automated Information Research, a University of Florida foundation established to promote innovation in information technology. Attendees will be eligible to receive 11.5 CLE credits.

The conference is free for full-time law students and UF faculty and staff. For registration and further information, visit the E-Discovery for the Small and Medium Case website.

Electronic discovery is increasingly becoming a fact of life for all litigators and this conference will feature a wide array of national experts discussing how to competently and cost-effectively handle e-discovery in small and medium cases. The conference will also shed light on the latest developments in Florida and federal e-discovery rules and will feature demonstrations of the latest e-discovery software and tools for each phase of the e-discovery process, for matters ranging from the most humble lawsuit to the largest mega-case.

The conference is part of UF Law’s E-Discovery Project, and is underwritten by the International Center for Automated Information Research, a University of Florida foundation established to promote innovation in information technology. Attendees will be eligible to receive 11.5 CLE credits.

The conference is free for full-time law students and UF Law faculty. For registration and further information, visit the E-Discovery for the Small and Medium Case website.

Walkin’ Lawton is an in-depth biography of the late Gov. Lawton Chiles (JD 55). Author John Dos Passos Coggin conducted more than 100 interviews with Chiles’s family, friends, and coworkers, and also utilized a wide variety of news sources, political papers, and even the governor’s own progress reports from his 1,000-mile walk. A full review of Walkin’ Lawton has been published by the Tampa Bay Times and is available online at http://www.tampabay.com/features/books/review-john-dos-passos-coggins-new-biography-focuses-on-walkin-lawton/1271175.

The Legal Information Center has two copies of the book, which may be requested through its online catalog.

Sixth annual Wolf Family Lecture March 13

The topic of the sixth annual Wolf Family Lecture on the American Law of Real Property on March 13 at 11 a.m. in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center is “Property Law and the Rise, Life, and Demise of Racially Restrictive Coveneants.” The lecture will feature Carol Rose, the Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor Emeritus of Law and Organization and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School.

The lecture is free and open to the law school community and general public.

The Wolf Family Lecture Series was endowed by a gift from UF Law Professor Michael Allan Wolf, who holds the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law, and his wife, Betty.

Past scholars who have delivered the Wolf Family Lecture in the American Law of Real Property include Thomas W. Merrill, Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School; Gregory S. Alexander, A. Robert Noll Professor of Law at Cornell Law School; Lee Fennel, Max Pam Professor of Law at the University of Chicago; Joseph William Singer, Bussey Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School; and Vicki L. Been, Boxer Family Professor of Law and director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University School of Law.

UF Journal of Law and Public Policy hosts symposium on media law on March 14

Should false statements of fact be protected under the First Amendment? That was the question at issue in United States v. Alvarez, a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court case overturning the Stolen Valor Act, which attempted to criminalize individuals for lying about receiving a military medal.  More recently, however, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a new version of the Stolen Valor Act, creating penalties for individuals who lie about receiving military medals and who profit from the deception.

This is the topic of the 2013 Journal of Law and Public Policy’s Annual Symposium, which will be hosted March 14 in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center at the UF Levin College of Law. Panelists include UF Law Professor Lyrissa Lidsky, attorney Craig D. Feiser and Colonel Michael L. Smidt, staff judge advocate of U.S. Special Operations Command.

The event will begin with a reception at 11:30 a.m., a panel discussion at noon and a question-and-answer session. It will be open to students, professors and practitioners.

Come and hear what these experienced professionals have to say on this controversial issue. CLE credit will be offered. Click here for more information on the symposium or here for more information on JLPP.

Dean hosts Music Night March 17

Got a hidden musical talent? Show it off at the upcoming Music Night 2013 to be held Sunday, March 17, at 7 p.m. at the home of Dean Robert Jerry and his wife, Lisa. All students and faculty are invited – but the “ticket” to attend is that you must bring a dessert and agree to perform a musical piece (play an instrument or sing a song). A piano will be available. Each participant can bring one guest. Space is limited, so sign up is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To register, stop by the Dean’s Office and see Doris Perron.

CSRRR spring lecture, panel examines Trayvon Martin case on March 20

The Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations’ 10th annual Spring Lecture & Panel Discussions, “At Close Range: The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin,” will feature New York Times visual op-ed columnist Charles Blow. The event is March 20 in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom, HOL 180.

Participants include UF faculty and graduate students from history, journalism, African-American studies, sociology, anthropology, law, education, political science, English, philosophy and health services research. Panelists will discuss a range of topics including racial bias and media perspectives and they will recommend policy changes.

Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper’s graphics director, a position he held for nine years. Blow went on to become the paper’s design director for news before leaving in 2006 to become the art director of National Geographic Magazine.

Blow often appears on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, Starting Point and AC360. He has also appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and Hardball with Chris Matthews, Headline News’ The Joy Behar show, Fox News’ Fox and Friends, the BBC and Al Jazeera, as well as numerous radio programs.

32nd Annual Dunwody Distinguished Lecture in Law

The Florida Law Review welcomes Professor Randy Barnett as the 32nd Annual Dunwody Distinguished Lecturer in Law. Barnett, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, will discuss the recent United States Supreme Court decision upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at 10 a.m. on Friday, March 22, in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Barnett has written and commented extensively on the Affordable Care Act and represented the National Federal of Independent Businesses as its case against the ACA was presented before the Supreme Court last spring. Barnett will discuss the general implications of the court’s landmark decision, as well as fundamental misunderstandings he perceives among the legal academic community regarding the decision’s import. Barnett’s lecture, “Who Won the Obamacare Case (and Why Did So Many Law Professors Miss the Boat)?” precedes an article of the same name to be published in an upcoming edition of the Florida Law Review.

For additional information, contact the Florida Law Review at www.FloridaLawReview.com or 352-273-0670.

Electronic Discovery for the Small and Medium Case April 4-5

The University of Florida Levin College of Law and Electronic Discovery Reference Model are pleased to announce the first-of-its-kind conference devoted to “Electronic Discovery for the Small and Medium Case.” The conference will be held April 4 and 5, 2013, at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and will be broadcast live. Students may view the webcasts free of charge.

The conference will focus on solutions to the difficulties, issues, and decisions that attorneys face in competently and cost-effectively handling e-discovery in small and medium cases. The conference will feature demonstrations of a new generation of right-sized e-discovery software and tools for each phase of the e-discovery process in small and medium sized cases and include starter e-discovery toolkits for each in-person attendee.

The toolkits will contain trial licenses for e-discovery software used to preserve and collect electronically stored information (ESI) from desktops to the web; convert collected ESI to usable forms; perform rapid, powerful searches; and facilitate production of relevant, responsive ESI. Representatives from AccessData, Catalyst, Digital WarRoom, iConect, kCura, LexisNexis Litigation Solutions, Nuix, Pinpoint Labs, X1 Discovery and others will be on hand to demonstrate the ease and accessibility of their products – helping attendees test-drive their toolkits.

Online attendees will receive a limited version of the e-discovery toolkit; for the full toolkit you must attend in person.

Whether you attend in person or watch the live stream, don’t miss this chance to learn how to translate e-discovery challenges into a winning strategies.

For more information:

• Conference Website
• About ICAIR & the E-Discovery Project
• Conference Agenda

Adam Losey (JD 09) and Samir Mathur (JD 09) formed IT-Lex, a legal education nonprofit.

By Felicia Holloman
Law student writer

“The bar is very low for technology law humor,” observed Samir Mathur (JD 09). This was all the more reason for Mathur, Adam Losey (JD 09), Ralph Losey (JD 79), and Catherine Losey (JD 09) to form IT-Lex, a legal education nonprofit that promotes educational and literary advancement in the field of technology law.

Technology law (as defined by IT-Lex) covers legal issues regarding information security, privacy, and electronic discovery—all rapidly evolving areas of law that pose challenges to lawyers across the country.

Adam Losey compared the ever-evolving field of technology law to the “wild West. . . . It is interesting because we are creating the law, and watching collisions between antiquated legal doctrines and modern technological realities,” he said.

The idea for IT-Lex began last summer when Losey, and other attorneys and judges sent a letter to Above The Law, a popular legal blog. The letter discussed the importance of electronic discovery, or eDiscovery, and inspired Losey to create an organization that promoted education and scholarship in the burgeoning field of technology law, and that offered a merit-based way for the best and brightest law students to be integrated with leading scholars and practitioners (and to win cash prizes, to boot).

“If you understand technology law, you can add value from day one at nearly any law firm,” said Losey. As an attorney with Foley & Lardner LLP, Losey finds technology law a reoccurring topic in his work, and is a founding member of Foley’s brand-new eDiscovery and Data Management practice group.

Outside of work, both Losey and Mathur emphasized the importance of technology and its applicable laws in our daily lives.

“I brush my teeth with it every morning,” said Losey, who also builds computers as a hobby. In law school, Losey wrote a law review article on an eDiscovery issue that helped him to get a job teaching the same subject at Columbia University.

Although Mathur did not have a background in technology law before IT-Lex, he considers himself a “tech guy,” who is familiar with social networking sites and the latest technology products.

Mathur became involved in IT-Lex through Losey, whom he had known throughout law school. They lived a few blocks from each other on Second Avenue while attending UF Law.

Mathur is now the managing director of IT-Lex. He runs its website, which features twice daily posts covering technology law news.

The blog posts, submitted by law student interns and sometimes practitioners, are written in a style to make them entertaining for the less technology-savvy. “We try very hard to make them readable to those who can’t program their VCR’s and experts alike — a challenge indeed,” said Mathur.

The website also features videos of Losey, Mathur, and others explaining topics concerning technology law with skits and gags.

“Adam got slapped by his wife while speaking binary code in one, we had multiple takes for that one at his wife’s request,” noted Mathur when describing the lengths they went to create an entertaining video presentation on metadata.

However, Losey and Mathur also plan to make IT-Lex a scholarly venture with an anticipated journal publication. Submissions are reviewed by the members of IT-Lex, who are tasked with editing and generally prepping the articles for print.

Members are invited to join the organization based on their scholarship and work in the field of technology law. Current members include Ralph Losey (JD 79), Bill Hamilton  (JD 83), Francisco Ferreiro (JD 08), Catherine Losey (JD 09), and Jason Pill (JD 09); all UF Law alumni.

Meanwhile, a writing contest, sponsored by Foley & Lardner, is open to all law students who wish to have their technology law-related articles published in the first IT-Lex journal. The contest deadline is May 1. The grand prize winner will receive $5,000. However, all winners will get an invitation to become members of the organization and present their papers at a conference for those affiliated with IT-Lex.

The IT-Lex conference, called “Innovate,” will be held in Orlando, Fla. on Oct. 17 through 18, 2013.

“The hope is to get 100 to 200 attendees,” said Losey of the turn out to Innovate. The ultimate goal of the conference is to allow young lawyers and current practitioners to network and discuss all things technology law.

For more information on IT-Lex and how to become a friend of the organization, please visit: http://www.it-lex.org.

The Diversity and Community Relations Committee and OUTLaw (UF Law’s gay-straight alliance) are pleased to announce that Lauren Hannahs, director of LGBT Affairs at UF, will present the Gator Allies program at UF Law on Wednesday at noon in HOL 345. All are welcome.

Gator Allies is an educational opportunity offered by LGBT Affairs that focuses on relevant issues that affect the LGBTQ community, while offering the opportunity to engage with the question: what does it mean to be an ally to the LGBTQ community?

The Gator Allies program is designed to provide participants with:

• Increased awareness and understanding of current LGBTQ issues, and LGBT history
• Further understanding of heteronormativity and homophobia and how it affects everyone (not just LGBTQ people)
• Further understanding of what it means to be an ally to the LGBTQ community
• Skills and resources in being an ally across multiple contexts and communities

LIC Notes: vLex: A World of Information – with Translations

vLex is a database that provides access to current legal materials for 129 countries. While the exact materials available on vLex vary by country, they often include case law, legislation, regulations, gazettes, constitutions, legal books, journals and news coverage. Materials provided are generally in the official language of the country. vLex is able to automatically generate unofficial translations into 12 language options, including English.

The UF Legal Information Center provides access to vLex to UF faculty, staff, students, and UF Libraries visitors. The vLex link is located on our webpage under Foreign & Comparative Law Research: http://www.law.ufl.edu/library/library-information/find-a-database

If you are a UF faculty or staff member or a student and would like to access this database from home, you will need to follow our remote access procedures first.

Sixth annual Wolf Family Lecture March 13

The topic of the sixth annual Wolf Family Lecture on the American Law of Real Property on March 13 at 11 a.m. in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center is “Property Law and the Rise, Life, and Demise of Racially Restrictive Coveneants.” The lecture will feature Carol Rose, the Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor Emeritus of Law and Organization and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School.

The Wolf Family Lecture Series was endowed by a gift from UF Law Professor Michael Allan Wolf, who holds the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law, and his wife, Betty.

Past scholars who have delivered the Wolf Family Lecture in the American Law of Real Property include Thomas W. Merrill, Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School; Gregory S. Alexander, A. Robert Noll Professor of Law at Cornell Law School; Lee Fennel, Max Pam Professor of Law at the University of Chicago; Joseph William Singer, Bussey Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School; and Vicki L. Been, Boxer Family Professor of Law and director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University School of Law.

Dean hosts Music Night March 17

Got a hidden musical talent? Show it off at the upcoming Music Night 2013 to be held Sunday, March 17, at 7 p.m. at the home of Dean Bob Jerry and his wife, Lisa. All students and faculty are invited – but the “ticket” to attend is that you must bring a dessert and agree to perform a musical piece (play an instrument or sing a song). A piano will be available. Each participant can bring one guest. Space is limited, so sign up is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To register, stop by the Dean’s Office and see Doris Perron.

CSRRR spring lecture, panel examines Trayvon Martin case on March 20

The Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations’ 10th annual Spring Lecture & Panel Discussions, “At Close Range: The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin,” will feature New York Times visual op-ed columnist Charles Blow. The event is March 20 in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom, HOL 180.

Participants include UF faculty and graduate students from history, journalism, African-American studies, sociology, anthropology, law, education, political science, English, philosophy and health services research. Panelists will discuss a range of topics including racial bias and media perspectives and they will recommend policy changes.

Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper’s graphics director, a position he held for nine years. Blow went on to become the paper’s design director for news before leaving in 2006 to become the art director of National Geographic Magazine.

Blow often appears on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, Starting Point and AC360. He has also appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and Hardball with Chris Matthews, Headline News’ The Joy Behar show, Fox News’ Fox and Friends, the BBC and Al Jazeera, as well as numerous radio programs.

32nd Annual Dunwody Distinguished Lecture in Law

The Florida Law Review welcomes Professor Randy Barnett as the 32nd Annual Dunwody Distinguished Lecturer in Law. Barnett, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, will discuss the recent United States Supreme Court decision upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at 10 a.m. on Friday, March 22, in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Barnett has written and commented extensively on the Affordable Care Act and represented the National Federal of Independent Businesses as their case against the ACA was presented before the Supreme Court last spring. Barnett will discuss the general implications of the court’s landmark decision, as well as fundamental misunderstandings he perceives among the legal academic community regarding the decision’s import. Barnett’s lecture, “Who Won the Obamacare Case (and Why Did So Many Law Professors Miss the Boat)?” precedes an article of the same name to be published in an upcoming edition of the Florida Law Review.

For additional information, contact the Florida Law Review at www.FloridaLawReview.com or 352-273-0670.

Electronic Discovery for the Small and Medium Case April 4-5

The University of Florida Levin College of Law and Electronic Discovery Reference Model are pleased to announce the first-of-its-kind conference devoted to “Electronic Discovery for the Small and Medium Case.” The conference will be held April 4 and 5, 2013, at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and also will be broadcast live. Students may view the webcasts free of charge.

The conference will focus on solutions to the difficulties, issues, and decisions that attorneys face in competently and cost-effectively handling e-discovery in small and medium cases. The conference will feature demonstrations of a new generation of right-sized e-discovery software and tools for each phase of the e-discovery process in small and medium sized cases and include starter e-discovery toolkits for each in-person attendee.

For more information:

• Conference Website
• About ICAIR & the E-Discovery Project
• Conference Agenda

William Hamilton (JD 83) emphasized the importance of handling and sharing electronically stored information speaking April 8 at the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center. (Photo by Nicole Safker)

By Brandon Breslow
Student Writer

As William Hamilton (JD 83) addressed members of the North Central Florida Chapter of the Federal Bar Association (FBA), he held an ordinary laptop, standard in weight and design. But to Hamilton, it was the potential equivalent of 12,500 storage boxes of discovery documents, and it needed to be handled with care.

Hamilton, a partner of Tampa’s Quarles & Brady LLP, and Adam Losey (JD 09), an associate with Orlando’s Foley and Lardner LLP, explained the tactical advantages and obligations of using and managing digital information at the chapter’s conference. The pair presented “Federal Practice in the Electronic Age: Don’t Be A Dinosaur” on April 8 in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

“It is absolutely essential for litigators to know how to handle and share electronically stored information (ESI),” said Hamilton, who is also a UF Law adjunct professor teaching electronic discovery (e-discovery). “ESI is dramatically different from paper and litigators need new skills to get the best results for their clients while avoiding sanctions that are on the rise for mishandling ESI.”

The major difference for more experienced litigators is the volume of ESI in their cases. One printed gigabyte of ESI will fill 50 storage boxes and will cost $10,000 to review. Each important witness in an average case provides about five gigabytes of ESI that will need to be collected and reviewed. Assuming a case requires five to 10 of these witnesses, the costs of reviewing ESI can be overwhelming if it is treated the same way as paper documents. But Hamilton and Losey seek to handle ESI differently.

“The ESI advantage is that electronic files are searchable, while paper is not,” Hamilton said, “and it’s important that litigators, new and old, learn the tools to do it properly.”

If ESI is handled incorrectly, the case will slow down and costs will go up, said Losey, who became interested in e-discovery through the work of his father, Ralph Losey (JD 79).

Adam Losey was a student in Hamilton’s first e-discovery class at UF Law and has since become a recognized expert in the field. He now teaches e-discovery as an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

Losey emphasized the importance of ESI during the pre-trial discovery conference, also known as the 26(f) conference as it is governed by Rule 26 of Federal Civil Procedure.

“If you handle this conference wrong,” Losey said, “you do your client a great disservice.”

A common mistake during the 26(f) conference is miscommunication between the parties of the lawsuit in how to share, preserve and manage the ESI in the case.

“Frequently, the attorneys don’t have the language or understanding necessary to have a productive 26(f) conference,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton and Losey agree that these mistakes lead to increases in costs that would otherwise be unnecessary.

“Our end goal was to help litigators win, reduce costs and speed up litigation,” Hamilton said.

UF Law was one of the first law schools to offer a regular course in e-discovery, taught by Hamilton, so that students may study the emerging field within litigation. Ralph Losey offers an online e-discovery course for UF Law students in the summer.

“It was appropriate that we held this conference at UF Law because UF has been at the cutting edge of e-discovery for years,” Hamilton said.

E-discovery writer Ralph Losey addresses those in attendence at the Sedona E-Discovery Evening held at the UF Levin College of Law.

It’s time for the legal profession to move into the 21st century and for law students to consider a new and rapidly expanding field.

A distinguished group of experts spoke about the importance of electronic discovery at Tuesday’s “E-Discovery Evening,” which was co-sponsored by The Sedona Conference and the Levin College of Law.

Noted e-discovery writer Ralph Losey stressed how different the world has become with modern technology and how lawyers are doing a poor job adapting.

“We’ve been graduating people out of law school who are prepared to practice law in the 19th century,” said Losey, a shareholder at Akerman Senterfitt. “They’re prepared to work with Abe Lincoln, who had a partner and an associate. They went through papers, and they went to a trial courtroom.”

Law students are still generally trained to review a limited number of documents and build a case around what is given to them. But today’s cases can have millions of electronic documents in a variety of formats that have to be reviewed, Losey said.

“You’re not trained to deal with 5 million documents. Cases now – with just 10 witnesses in a corporation – they’re going to have millions of documents,” Losey said. “You cannot look at each document. That’s the real world; it’s not the Abe Lincoln world of just having a few paper documents.” Patrick Oot, Verizon’s director of electronic discovery and senior counsel, gave the example of Verizon buying out MCI to show how complicated e-discovery issues can be.

There were over 2.4 million documents (1.3 terabytes of date) that had to be reviewed in that case, Oot said.

This required 115 attorneys at one firm doing privilege review and 110 attorneys at another firm doing timeline review. It took four months with attorneys working every day for 16 hours a day to finish the review, Oot said. Overall, just the review process cost over $13.5 million for outside counsel alone. Going forward, technological advances will make searching the documents more efficient.

Oot recently read an article that said there were only about 200 lawyers nationwide that can handle e-discovery issues well, but that number needs to grow quickly.

“As our general counsel put it when we first started this [e-discovery] group, he said, ‘This is the only practice within the company that I actually see growing,’” Oot said. “Federal regulatory, litigation, antitrust, intellectual property – he sees those groups shrinking where we’re hiring people all the time.”

With the e-discovery field growing so rapidly, The Sedona Conference has been at the forefront of establishing best practices in the field. One of the principles The Sedona Conference stands for is cooperation with opposing counsel on discovery issues.

“You want to be adversarial, obviously, but at the same time, I don’t think you want to be adversarial on the issues pertaining to what information is available,” said Joseph P. Guglielmo, a plaintiff e-discovery expert for Whaley, Drake & Kallas.

Guglielmo emphasized not asking for something from opposing counsel that you would not be comfortable producing.

One reason the opposing attorneys should cooperate is to satisfy judges, Guglielmo said. He remembers waiting for a pretrial conference about discovery when the judge called a case in which the lawyers argued about discovery issues.

“I won’t get into details with what she said, but she basically told them not to come back in her courtroom again, either one of them – that there would be sanctions if they brought another discovery issue to her attention, because they were things that she believed could’ve been worked out if the phone was picked up,” Guglielmo said.

Ken Withers, a distinguished e-discovery writer with The Sedona Conference, moderated the event. He has been working with e-discovery since 1987, he said.

In this time, two events have made discovery much more important, Withers said.

First, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended in 1983 and 1993 to allow more discovery, Withers said.

“The number of cases that actually went to trial was decreasing, and it’s now less than three percent of all cases filed,” he said. “Discovery went from being a means to an end – getting to trial – to being the end in and of itself. The stakes of discovery where thereby raised.”

Second, the desktop PC has led to the exponential growth in the amount of data in the world, Withers said.

The Honorable David Baker, a United States Magistrate for the Middle District of Florida, spoke about e-discovery from the judicial perspective.

All speakers agreed that this is the future of discovery and students should try to learn about it. Bill Hamilton, a Holland & Knight e-discovery expert who organized this event, teaches an e-discovery class – one of the first in the country – at the UF Levin College of Law.

“Be smart, look at where the future is, look at the trend,” Losey said. “This is where the opportunity lies. Take these courses on e-discovery; learn about it. Nobody else in the firms you go to are going to know anything about it, trust me… There are a few firms, but there are very few, so this is a time of opportunity. You’ve got to study this stuff.”

Added Oot: “If you want to work in this space, you might as well hitch your wagon to the star, because it’s a really good place to be.”