Federal Judiciary

"Practical E-Discovery Issues" by Magistrate Judge Chad Everingham - State Bar of Texas Litigation Section's quarterly magazine "The Advocate"

By Michael C. Smith

If you do litigation in Texas, this is yet another reason why you need to be a member of the Litigation Section of the State Bar of Texas. 

The Section puts out an outstanding quarterly publication The Advocate, edited by Lonny Hoffman of Houston, which deals with significant issues in litigation in Texas courts.  This quarter's edition is a blockbuster symposium issue E-Discovery: Perspectives From the Trenches.  The lead article Electronic Discovery - Is the System Broken? Can It Be Fixed? is by U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal of Houston, who has been chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure since 2007.  Of interest to Eastern District practitioners is an article by U.S. Magistrate Judge Chad Everingham of Marshall, Practical E-Discovery Issues. Judge Everingham recognizes his law clerk Jim Warriner for his insight and contributions to the article.

The article focuses on the use of stipulations to narrow discovery disputes over ESI, motion practice (and suggestions for effective briefing) when stipulations don't work, and "in particular" the conference requirements required for such motions, particularly those found in the Eastern District's local rules.  Judge Everingham notes that the genesis of the local rule was a recent meeting of the local Inn of Court, where he remembers one lawyer comparing the discovery teams in complex patent litigation cases to "hate mail" squads, assigned at the beginning of the case to impugn the adversary's reputation for discovery conduct.  (What, you thought the judges hadn't noticed this?)  He also refers lawyers to the e-discovery work done by The Sedona Conference, which has attempted to provide guidance to lawyers and courts in resolving ESI issues.

Litigation Section members should have a copy of this edition of the Advocate in their mailboxes already.  It will not be up on the Section's website until after the next issue comes out in the fall, so if you're interested in a copy, you can join the Section here.  Not that I'm biased or anything (I'm vice chair) but anyone reading this weblog from Texas (and many of you outside Texas) really ought to be a member.  We put on some pretty good CLE too...

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on July 21, 2010 (boomark / email).