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Last fall, I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel at the 2019 Relativity Fest entitled “Why Lawyers SHOULD Be Luddites.” It was a lively discussion about whether lawyers should be luddites, whether robots would be taking attorney jobs, should attorneys learn to code, and how to future-proof yourself. Opinions were split but what struck me the most was that a majority - if not all – of the attendees wanted to learn how to future-proof themselves. In this blog I offer tips on how to take advantage of technologies to do just that.

Generally speaking, the presumption is that third parties will bear at least some of the costs of complying with proper subpoenas. That said, Courts often expect that a requesting party will negotiate in good faith the costs of compliance and, if those costs are significant, the requesting party would agree to cover at least some of the costs or limit its requests in light of the requirement of FRCP 45(d)(2)(B)(ii). As demonstrated by a recent case, though FRCP 45 provides two avenues for a third party to recover its costs for responding to a subpoena in federal litigation, such awards are the exception to the rule.

There is a lot of talk around project management across all industries. In fact, according to Quora.com, the US alone has approximately 290,000 people that hold the PMP® (Project Management Professional) certification. I am one of those individuals. When I was first introduced to the PMP curriculum I was not sure how it would complement my e-discovery skill set but I soon learned it provides a valuable set of tools that can be directly translated to the e-discovery industry.

We depend on and indeed praise technology for the myriad ways it makes discovery more efficient and less costly than ever before. Such reverence, however, raises the question:  is there a point where the use of technology becomes too much? Can we become so enamored with the technological resources at our disposal that we neglect to use basic common sense and risk waiving certain basic rights? According to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, the answer is a resounding "Yes."