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.

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.

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.

“The Levin College of Law is one of the first law schools in the nation to offer a course in what is being called ‘E-Discovery,’” said UF Law Dean Robert Jerry. “We’re very pleased that, thanks to Adjunct Professor Bill Hamilton, we are also now the first to co-sponsor a conference on the topic with the very well-respected Sedona Conference.”

An “E-Discovery Evening” will be held 5-9 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28, on the law school campus in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom. The event is primarily for law students and faculty, but is also free and open to the public. Those attending from outside the University of Florida should RSVP to william.hamilton@hklaw.com or 813-227-6480.

Hamilton teaches the E-Discovery course at the law school, and helped set up a prestigious panel to discuss the changing world of e-discovery at the conference.

“The University of Florida should be very excited about its leadership in this area,” said Hamilton, who also serves as co-chair of Holland & Knight’s e-discovery team. “Other law schools have got to step up to the plate and teach electronic discovery because it’s a critical skill out there that judges are looking for. It’s almost a survival skill at this point. That’s why The Sedona Conference® has come here in recognition of Florida’s leadership in the e-discovery education world for students.”

The Sedona Conference® is a non-profit, non-partisan law and policy think-tank, and an international leader in e-discovery best practices.

“Sedona has initiated a law school outreach program and this is the initial featured program,” Hamilton said. “Sedona’s mission is really educational, and it’s designed to try to bring best practices to the legal profession.”

The “E-Discovery Evening” panel be composed of practicing attorneys, in-house counsel and a federal Magistrate Judge with expertise in electronic discovery. The panel and audience will engage in collaborative discussion of current e-discovery issues and will examine the issue from the perspective of the courts, in-house counsel, retained counsel for the plaintiff and defendant, addressing issues such as current professional e-discovery standards, how zealous advocates collaboratively manage e-discovery, what corporations are doing to manage the data deluge, when courts impose e-discovery sanctions and the expanding roles of e-discovery specialists in government, businesses and law firms. The panel will be moderated by Ken Withers, a distinguished e-discovery writer.

“Ken is one of the ultimate e-discovery gurus who was there at the very beginning,” Hamilton said. “He first worked with the Federal Judicial Center and joined Sedona approximately a year ago to become its executive director. Ken is one of the founding fathers of e-discovery.”

The panel members will be: The Honorable David Baker, United States magistrate, Middle District of Florida; Ralph Losey, noted e-discovery writer and shareholder at Akerman Senterfitt; Patrick Oot, Verizon, director of electronic discovery & senior counsel; and Joseph P. Guglielmo, Whaley Drake & Kallas, plaintiff e-discovery expert.

The four panelists will speak about e-discovery from their perspectives and will take questions from the audience.

The second half of the conference will consist of a hypothetical problem shared with the audience in advance. Hamilton expects the audience to participate in working through the various aspects of the problem.

“E-discovery is an exercise in judgment,” Hamilton said. “There are few hard and fast bright lines. When you’re practicing as a technology counsel or e-discovery counsel, you’re making decisions all the time. Those decisions require judgment; you have to have informed judgment. What we’re going to do is watch the panel exercising their informed judgment. And that judgment can be challenged. We expect it to be challenged from the audience.”

Hamilton stressed how important e-discovery is becoming with the world’s technological advances. Just one e-mail can easily end up in hundreds of places.

“The data is just dispersed everywhere,” Hamilton said. “For example, I send an e-mail to my students from work. That e-mail is on my computer at work at Holland & Knight, it’s on the servers at Holland & Knight, it’s on the servers here at the law school, and it’s on 30 different computers of my students here. They may forward it, they may store it in separate locations, they may put it on a storage device, or they may delete it. That’s just one e-mail. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands and you begin to get a picture of the digital deluge.”