SHO R T TA K E S

Be Ready for Litigation

David Cohen, chair of Reed Smith’s Records & E-Discovery Group, believes in litigation readiness beyond basics such as legal holds. “It includes knowing where your data is, keeping it as long as needed for business needs and legal compliance, and then eliminating data that has served its purpose and is no longer subject to any legal hold. He has a threestep plan for data hygiene: an up-to-date data map/ inventory; knowing what you need to keep and for how long; and regular remediation of obsolete data.

Source: Lexology

Detoxing from BigLaw

Meyling "Mey" Ly Ortiz, managing counsel – labor & employment for Toyota Motor North America, discusses in Above the Law a phenomenon she recognized after moving in-house seven years ago, “detoxification,” which she describes as “culture shock” experienced by new in-house counsel – including night sweats. “I clearly remember waking in the middle of the night in a panic because I thought I’d forgotten to bill,” she writes. “I was anxious because without billing and without any work product like a brief or discovery to show, I wasn’t sure how to ‘prove’ to my new boss that I had indeed been working.” She says that when she was free of the blaming/CYA culture of law firms, she learned to get comfortable taking risks and exercising judgment — even without all the facts and data. “I had to learn to let go of fear of failure and accept uncertainty and that if I made a mistake, we would address, learn and move on.

Source: The Meybe

Post-COVID In-House Work

Adam Goss, former National President of ACC Australia, worried about post-pandemic in-house collaboration. “Throughout my career,” he writes, “I’ve worked in offices from pokey to palatial, to open plan environments. Currently, I’m in an entirely open plan, hot-desking environment, working next to my colleagues, including the CEO. An in-house team can make any of those arrangements work effectively.

Source: ACC Docket

Efficiency Is Top In-House Priority

A new report from Thomson Reuters Institute on the state of corporate law departments uncovers a subtle shift in law department priorities. “While the enduring purpose of an organization’s legal function is to safeguard the business,” the report says, “a slightly higher number of respondents in our survey cited efficiency as a stronger priority for the department.” Based on extensive benchmarking, the report discusses a set of consistent in-house themes, including the rapid evolution of legal technology and digitization and the risk that laggards will be perpetually playing catch-up; the importance of focusing on the right metrics to monitor performance and drive improvement; and the need for better modes of working with outside counsel and other outside service providers. Chock-a-block with useful information and tools, an action provides practical steps for law departments eager to act on key takeaways in the report.

Source: Thomson Reuters Institute

ABA Prez is Civic-Minded

Deborah Enix-Ross, senior advisor to the International Dispute Resolution Group at Debevoise & Plimpton, become ABA president in August with a focus on three words: civics, civility and collaboration “The lack of understanding of civics and the lack of civility affects all aspects of our lives,” she says. “[U]nless we can manage to have people understand there are ways to engage that don’t require devolving into some of the chaos we’ve seen, we really are at an inflection point in our society.”

Source: ABA Journal

Rivals Discover Each Other

E-discovery competitors Exterro and Zapproved have joined forces to better deal with the convergence of e-discovery, privacy, digital forensics and incident response. GCs, the companies says, have become the “risk quarterback” in charge of not just litigation but cybersecurity and all the other work. It is all converging under the GC.

Source: Legal IT Insider