Spilling the Beans on a Dirty Little Secret of Most Trial Lawyers

http://ow.ly/7E47K

This is an article by Ralph Losey, Esq. on his blog e-Discovery Team.

This article discusses the fact that many attorneys still don't understand electronic discovery. The article purports to reveal two secrets, one which is the lack of understanding of eDiscovery, the other of which is not addressed in this article but promises to be revealed in a subsequent writing.  The 2nd secret to be revealed  has to do with search engine technology.

The article states, "The truth is, the world has changed too fast in the past few decades for most trial lawyers to keep up. As a result, most are incompetent to handle electronic evidence, including discovery of their client’s documents. A majority of trial lawyers are in complete denial of their incompetence. Others admit the painful truth, but just bide their time until retirement. They hope that e-discovery won’t pop up in any of their cases. If and when it does, they see nothing wrong with delegating core lawyer functions to outside vendors. Only a few admit the truth and have the intensity and dedication to do something about it, to put in the hard work to gain personal competence, or, and this is just as good for those who have no aptitude or interest in e-discovery, to bring people into their firm who are competent and then have the wisdom to delegate to them."

The article further states, "See: E-Discovery Competence is a Fundamental Ethical Challenge Now Faced by the Legal Profession, Chapter 34 of my bookElectronic Discovery (West 2010). It is much easier to blame judges or the rules than your friends and colleagues.

Despite this conspiracy of silence, the secret of incompetence is known by all in the trade (although the word incompetent is never used). It is there to be seen by anyone who looks. For instance, a survey of attorneys made by the Federal Judicial Center, Case-Based Civil Rules Survey (2009), found that e-discovery was only discussed in 30% of the 26(f) conferences, which included discussions not to do e-discovery."

In addition, another blog post by Mike McBride, discusses Mr. Losey's article, and provides further insight on this topic.  A link to Mr. McBride's article is provided below:

 http://ow.ly/7E4fC


P.S.  On this Thanksgiving, Mr. Losey offers some wonderful words of thanks in his article, "I am grateful for the freedom I enjoy to speak and write controversial things to try to change the law. I am grateful to live in the U.S.A., a country that not only allows free speech, even if unpopular and anti-establishment, but encourages it, and makes it a core constitutional value. Like all lawyers in the U.S., I have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, including especially, for me at least, the First Amendment."