Legal Commentary

Fascinating dinner last night with the Fios (see below) gang, to kick off LegalTech West Coast. Mary Mack and Debbie Caldwell were among the orchestrators of the evening, which featured two prominent U.S. Magistrate Judges who you have been reading a lot about (in Craig Ball's EDD column): Andrew Peck, (far left) of the Southern District of NY, and David Waxse (left) , of the District of Kansas. It was a sneak preview, of sorts, of tomorrow's keynote address at LegalTech West Coast.

Mary Mack moderated the eat-and-talk roundtable discussion, which drew about 25 lawyers and one summer associate for an off-the-record discussion of recent discovery trends. Peck recently caused a lot of heat with his Gross case ruling, a "wake up call to the bar" chastising attorneys about sloppy searches and failure to truly cooperate with opposing counsel (See Ball's June column), Waxse authored the key  Williams v. Spring/United Management Co. case in 2006.(See ABA Journal's "These Cases Rock").

The two men interact well together and quickly drew the audience into the discussion, which covered a lot of territory running from ethics to how EDD requests are sometimes used to bully the other side into submission because the sheer cost of production.

Both judges -- along with Tom Allman and moderator Carole Basri -- will be presenting the Thursday keynote (immediately following our "Green Your Career" networking breakfast for jobseekers) at LegalTech West Coast, at the LA Convention Center. Don't miss it. These two judges are entertaining, and substantive, and it's bound to be a great panel. For information, visit www.legaltechshow.com -- or just come on' over to the LA Convention Center!