Sieger au 21e siecle

Mon ami et confrère, Jean-François De Rico, et moi avons eu le plaisir d'être invoté comme conférenciers à la conférence divisionnaire des juges de la cour Supérieure qui avait lieu cette année à Montebello. On nous a demandé de traiter de l'usage des technologies de l'information devant le tribunal. Pour ce faire, nous avons soumis un texte théorique sur le droit des TI qui focussait principalement sur la Loi concernant le cadre juridique des technologies de l'information et que nous publierons sans doute bientôt. Celle-ci leur fut remise sur une clé USB. Nous avons aussi monté une présentation Powerpoint que nous nous sommes engagés à leur remettre et que voici (Edit26-06-2008: veuillez noter que le masque et les images contenues dans la présentation ont été enlevés - pour une copie originale, veuillez me contacter):

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Dans le cadre de cette présentation, nous avons demandé aux juges d'être interventionnistes (cette fois seulement :-)) et pour les y inciter, nous leur offrions des clés USB et le livre de la conférence Leg@l.IT.

Je dois admettre que j'ai été impressionné par l'intérêt démontré par les juges pour les TI et l'impact de celles-ci sur la pratique du droit et leur travail. Il ne reste plus qu'à espérer que les avocats offrirons aux juges la chance de mettre en pratique ce que nous leur avons montré! Nous suivrons la jurisprudence à ce sujet de près...

En terminant, je désire remercier le juge en chef adjoint, l'Honorable André Wery, pour cette invitation et pour la belle introduction lors de laquelle il nous a fait un merveilleux clin d'oeil que je cite ici: "Ils sont jeunes d'âges mais vieux d'expériences dans le domaine des TI". je remercie aussi les juges Claudine Roy et lise Matteau pour leur présentation et leurs bons mots. Merci encore pour cette opportunité hors du commun!

Colloque sur la Cour supérieure en matière civile

Le mercredi 14 mai 2008, j'ai participé au Colloque sur la Cour supérieure en matière civile qui avait pour titre Les expertises: de nouvelles règles en vue et qui se tenait en présence de l’honorable François Rolland, juge en chef, et de l’honorable André Wery, juge en chef adjoint, ainsi que de Me Jean-François Michaud, président du comité de liaison avec la Cour supérieure en matière civile, et Me Martine L. Tremblay. Cette dernière et l’honorable André Wery y ont présenté les conclusions et recommandations du Rapport du sous-comité Magistrature-Justice-Barreau sur les expertises.

À mon avis, le moment fort de ce colloque fut la présentation du juge Wery qui a posé son regard critique sur la preuve par expert afin, comme il nous l'indiquait, "de déterminer s’il est toujours à la hauteur des exigences d’un système de justice civile efficace, accessible et juste". Comme c'est souvent le cas, posez la question, c'est y répondre. Ainsi, plutôt que de paraphraser l'excellent texte que nous a offert le juge Wery, voici sa présentation Powerpoint qu'il a eu la gentillesse de m'autoriser à mettre en ligne:

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Notons en terminant que j'ai eu le plaisir de débuter ce colloque en présentant un prototype d'entente sur le déroulement de l'instance interactive qui sera rendue public lors de l'ouverture des tribunaux. [Je tente depuis 2 semaines de mettre le projet en format .xdp en ligne mais sans succès. Si vous savez comment faire, contactez-moi!]

E-Discovery in Canada

A new bible was just published by LexisNexis for the canadian interested in e-discovery: E-Discovery in Canada. It is a collective effort by my friends Kelly Friedman, Susan Nickle, Glenn Smith and Susan Wortzman, my fellow Sedoner James Swanson, Todd Burke that I have ye to meet and other lawyers who I don't personally know but have read about mainly (I think) from the Ontario Discovery task force: Vincenzo Rondinelli, Andrew McCreary and James C. Morton. If you want to know more about them, here are their bios.

The forward is by the Honourable Mr. Justice Colin Campbell who, with Kelly Friedman and Glenn Smith, spoke at Leg@l.IT2008.

Here is the Table of Content.

I look forward to receiving my complimentary copy to read it and report! ;-) [I will know who amongst them reads my blog...]

Here is what LexisNexis has to say about the book:

Your Source for Dealing with the Intricacies of E-discovery
As we move more towards the paperless world, the discovery of electronic records has become a critical issue for all practitioners involved in civil litigation. Understanding the technology, best practices and law surrounding e-discovery in Canada has never been more important. Butterworths E-Discovery in Canada arms the practitioner with the tools needed to navigate this complex component of the litigation process.

Authors Susan Wortzman, Todd Burke, Andrew McCreary, Glenn Smith, James Swanson, James Morton, Vincenzo Rondinelli, Susan Nickle and Kelly Friedman are a group of highly respected and seasoned practitioners with a tremendous wealth of e-discovery expertise. Their collective experience has helped create a very accessible resource that will strip away the intimidation factor surrounding e-discovery. By taking you through the entire process of identification, preservation, collection, review and production of electronically-stored information, E-Discovery in Canada is a comprehensive guide that no Canadian litigator should be without.

Features and Benefits
This vital publication offers practitioners direction in an area that has grown well beyond commercial litigation and class action suits. E-Discovery in Canada arms the reader with:

Expert analysis - the nation's leading e-discovery specialists offer a variety of viewpoints, providing the critical advice practitioners need given the scarcity of Canadian judicial guidance in this area
In-depth appendices - including both national and provincial e-discovery guidelines

Hitting the Hot Buttons
E-discovery in Canada covers all the bases of electronic discovery, a litigation component that is recently experiencing growth in employment law, family law and criminal law. This guide will help the practitioner understand:

The situation in the U.S., where a more mature e-discovery market has yielded judicial rulings that will help guide Canadian policy formulation
How to deal with privileged documents to avoid the risk of incorrect disclosure
The legal duty to advise their clients on preservation issues to avoid potential sanctions
How the traditional rules of bearing the costs of producing information may not apply when dealing with electronically stored information
The limits employers face in their ability to control employee communications and access that information

A Must Have For
New or non-tech savvy practitioners - who may be intimidated by the daunting task of electronic discovery
All Canadian lawyers - if you are involved in civil litigation - especially commercial litigation, bankruptcy and insolvency - you are grappling with a complex issue in which national guidelines are currently being released, making this a vital time to stay abreast of e-discovery

Il ne manque qu'un tel livre pour le Québec et la France... À suivre!

A Paralegal's Blog to educate lawyers

I am slowly emerging from Legal.IT2008 and have some 2000 unread RSS feeds piled up in my Bloglines... Nevertheless, I still find some new interesting stuff while surfing the web. I just put my eyes on an american paralegal blog I was unaware of where I learned about, well, what it is happening in Canada!!

Thanks to Christine M. Parizo and her A Paralegal's Blog where she posted about Ontario giving legitimacy to paralegals' profession.

Christine, I am definetly adding you to my blogroll!

Des droits d'auteur gouvernementaux sur les lois

Simon Fodden, le cerveau des cerveaux derrière Slaw, m'apprend une fois de plus quelque chose d'intéressant dans son billet "Oregon Claims Copyright Over Laws". Il écrit:

I know that Canada and Ontario claim Crown copyright in our laws but explicitly permit copying if the material is reproduced accurately and that copyright is acknowledged.

Qu'en est-il au Québec? Il appert que, "depuis novembre 2000, le gouvernement du Québec a instauré, aux Publications du Québec, un guichet central pour faciliter les démarches des citoyens, des entreprises et des institutions désirant utiliser les contenus gouvernementaux."

Selon celui-ci, "le guichet central mis en place vise à assurer l'harmonisation des pratiques pour le traitement des demandes de droits d'auteur ainsi qu'à favoriser une gestion efficace du patrimoine intellectuel de l'État. À cet égard, Les Publications du Québec délivrent des autorisations permettant aux intéressés d'utiliser les informations contenues dans les documents et les sites Internet produits par les ministères et les organismes, sans oublier la reproduction des lois et des règlements diffusés par l'Éditeur officiel du Québec." (mes soulignements)

Aurais-je dû recevoir une telle autorisation afin de reprendre une partie du contenu du site du guichet central? Recevrai-je une mise en demeure de cesser cette utilisation comme ce fut le cas pour les sites Justia et Public.Resources.Org?

Clés USB ou ordinateur portable?

Mon co-paneliste du Techshow, Brett Burney, est un auteur prolifique. Chaque fois que je lis un article sur les TI pour le droit, s'il n'en est pas l'auteur, il y est cité. Disons que, aux États-Unis du moins, c'est une autorité dans le domaine.

Il nous offre aujourd'hui un article fort intéressant, repris par Law.com, sur l'usage de clés USB comme "ordinateurs portables".

J'utilise depuis environ 2 ans portableapps que j'apprécie énormément. Par ailleurs, je dois vous mettre en garde contre une allégation de Brett qui me semble erronée. Il écrit:
all the data is stored on the USB memory drive, meaning that no data is left on the host computer when you unplug the drive.
Ma compréhension et mon expérience sont à l'effet que, à tout le moins, portableapps laisse des données sur l'ordinateur hôte puisqu'il interagit avec celui-ci. En effet, si vous ne disposiez pas de lecteur multimédia sur votre clé, celle-ci lancerait WindowsMedia sur le poste hôte. De la même façon, un fureteur pourrait retenir des cookies.

En poussant, j'oserais même dire que l'allégation est fausse et ce, même pour les clés U3, selon la définition retenue pour "data". Brett parle vraisemblablement de données liées au travail, d'informations privilégiées, etc. Par contre, en retenant une définition plus vaste de "données", on peut conclure que le simple fait de brancher une clé U3, ou n'importe quoi d'autre, dans un port USB laissera des données dans le log d'activités de ce port. En plus, selon ce que j'ai appris récemment, cette action laisserait aussi une trace (des données?) dans la mémoire de... la batterie.

Qui a dit que nous vivions à l'aire de l'information? Je pense que nous sommes plutôt dans l'aire des données!

How to follow new caselaw with RSS

I gave a webcast called 60 tech tips in 60 minutes today with Dan Pinnington and David Bilinsky and was asked by one of the attendees how to follow new caselaw on a particular topic with RSS feeds. I have posted about that in the past but "a movie being worth a 1000 words", here you go:

From in-house back to private practice

Interesting article from law.com on in-house counsels going back to private practice.

Here are some interesting quotes:

"For many years, the role of in-house counsel was to act as a conduit between inside business people and outside counsel. Their role lasted only so long as it took to get a matter from their in-box to their out-box."

"The role of corporate law departments has evolved from being primarily an intermediary between the company and its law firms to being a full-service legal team involved in every major business decision."

It seems that just as law firm experience provides important skills for in-house counsel, the in-house experience can be valuable to law firms. Those returning to firms with in-house experience have not only legal skills but also contacts and perspective that can help with getting and keeping business. "They can go back to a firm and help on the business side with client relations," said Krebs. "It would be tremendously valuable in a law firm."

The Mobile Office: Take Your Desktop in your Pocket

I am currently blogging LIVE LIVE beside Bret Burney who is presenting with me on Mobile Office.

He is reviewing certain solutions for Palms and iPhone, and I did Blackberry. If we have some free time at the end, I will discuss about Windows Mobile.

Here is my presentation (you really had to be there... see you next year!):

Todd Flaming and Brett Burney on Small Volume E-Discovery

During the course of their session Small Volume E-Discovery: One Hard Drive Could Make, or Break, Your Case, presented in the Solo an Small firm track of the ABA TechShow. Todd Flaming and Brett Burney invited participants to consider the discovery of electronically stored information in all types of cases.

The participants had a lot of interesting questions for Brett Burney on the technical possibilities available to recover all sorts of ESI, (IM, PIN, Cell phone, email records).

Todd Flaming provided a lot of interesting insight in the use of the common office suite software research tools that can be used in smaller volume e-discovery cases.

As all cases now inevitably involve ESI, this presentation was right on point and introduced participants to products that can be used to manage the discovery proceedings in smaller cases on a reasonable budget.

JF DeRico

Craig Ball and Judge John Facciola: EDD Jeopardy

ABA own's Alex Trebeck, Craig Ball, put on quite a show during an EDD version of Jeopardy



Judge John Facciola, and fellow members of The jeopardy jury, David Cohen and Browning E. Marean, had a few occasion to discuss EDD issues, among which the retention and preservation of ephemeral data and the difficulties it raises.



With such categories as EDD-ucation / Alphabet Soup / E-discovery Lingo /I never met a data I didn't like, the 3 volunteers had the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of the EDD rules and practice, and the IT acronyms that have integrated our jargon.



JFD

Leg@l.IT2008

Enjoying the ABA Techshow? Join us in lovely Montreal for Leg@l.IT2008, at the Mount-Royal Center on April 21st, 2008.

Have a look at the three tracks program and the amazing faculty.

Register quickly before it is full!

Allan MacKenzie and Ben Schorr: The Data Mix and Mingle: How to Get Your Data Into Other Applications

Now this is a useful session which is hard to blawg about because Allan and Ben were giving tips on how to deal with information hosted in different Microsoft software and merge them. Here are some examples:



1) The classic paste special

2) How to mail merge (contacts to letter)

3) How to export emails from Outlook to Excel to send an email blast (and be blocked by firewall or be blacklisted)

4) How to tie data from an Excel spreadsheet to a Word document in order for the later to be automatically updated when the spreadsheet changes

5) How to integrate parts of an Excel table to Word

6) How to convert a Word outline into a Powerpoint presentation

7) How to effectively draw in Word



The whole presentation was made in parallel fir MS 2003 (Allan) and 2007 (Ben).

Showtime at the Courthouse: A Demonstration of Courtroom Tech Toys

Fellow Canadian Nils Jensen gave us a very entertaining presentation on the use of technology in the courtroom : “high tech on a low budget”. Nils Jensen explained his use of a document camera to present exhibits and power point presentations during argument.

Paul J. Unger discussed the appropriate use of power point and other technology in the courtroom. Paul convincingly presented the functionalities of TimeMap and Verdical and the advantages of using these products in the Courtroom.

JFD

LexisNexis: DMS Redefined

I attended a presentation in the Vendors' Track about SaaS. Alvin Tedjamulia presented us NetDocuments, LexisNexis' DMS.

I have to admit I was impressed with the ease with which you can centralize your data. Being webbased, it means you need an excellent connection that never fails. This obviously is a solution for medium and large firms but I am told it is a good solution for 1-3 attorneys as well. Within an hour of formation lawyers can start working and assistants after about 3 hours. Have a look at it!

Keynote Address—Who’s Watching You? A Conversation About Privacy on the Internet

Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC.ORG) in Washington, is speaking about Eliot Spitzer's resignation and the surrounding events in light of privacy issues.

While showing a funny suite of pictures on Powerpoint relating the little story, he pointed us to:
Ashley Alexandra Dupré's MySpace page [now offline], Spitzer's alleged call-girl from the Emperor Club VIP
Eliot Spitzer on Wikipedia

It seems that Client 9 was caught because of his currency transactions... His Manahattan bank reported important transactions on his account which led to wiretapping which ended up by his resignation.

According to the Bank Secrecy Act, Banls have reporting obligations that now go beyond cash deposits of more than 10000$.

Information Awareness Office was used to capture information on americans as opposed to what it was meant to do, ie protect them by capturing information from outsiders. Now deffunded, its project are nevertheless being continued by other agencies. These projects are being legitimised by cross-reference to numerous laws that are unrelated (PATRIOT Act, Banking, etc.) and justified by 911.

Here are some of their projects:
Face recognition
Walking recognition

For more information on privacy issues, Mark invites you to visit the Electronic Privacy Information Center

Part II: Tom and Mark head2head

TM: What is the future of Real ID (statute requiring individuals to present a proof of identification that respects certain legal requirements)?
MR: It aims at preventing terrorists to board planes, federal buildings, etc. The project was put in place because states didn't want the responsibility or the costs involved with RealID. In fact, many states like New Hampshire and Iowa are enacting laws against what the federal government is planning to do...

TM: What about Google-Doubleclick merger?
MR: Microsoft pleaded there would be an impact on competition. Epic was approaching it on the profiling side. They were asking for privacy safeguards.

TM: Presidential debate
MR: Big impact of the internet (CNN-You Tube)
Obama campaign really effective on the web
Candidates are becomming more sensitive to younger tech savvy voters.

Part III: Q&A

Warrantless boarder-crossing search
No answer yet, more questions:
Can a laptop be looked at when you enter the USA?
What happen if you have encrypted files?
According to a conversation MR had with DHS's representatives, it is not in their policies and they won't do it unless there is prima facie evidence that they must.

Unability to take information off social websites
No answer, much litigation!
Google keeps the IP address, cookies and the search, and it time stamps it and retain the information for 2 years.

My friend Dave Bilinsky, from Thoughtful Legal Management, asked what tools people sould use to protect privacy online
Mark referred him to EPIC Online Guide to Practical Privacy Tools

Telecom Immunity
Epic opposes Telecom Immunity but understand that some telcos were squeezed and were trying to work with the governement. Let's wait and see which bills make it through!

Wow! That was an amazing session! A little reality check of where the world and your privacy are. I'm selling my PC right away!

Judge Herbert Dixon and Todd Flaming: A Real-World EDD Motions Hearing

I attended the Moot EDD Motions Hearing Session presented by Judge Herbert Dixon, Tom O'Connor, Todd Flaming and Browning Marean. The session was set up as motion hearings during which the speakers presented the arguments to put forward when handling EDD issues before the court.

The panellists briefly covered the following contentious issues in their pleadings on a motion to compel:
Scope
Materiality
Costs
Privileged information

Judge Dixon stressed the importance of the pre-trial meeting (to allow the Court to clear its docket !) and ordered the parties to meet again and negotiate the scope of the documents to be provided.

On a subsequent hearing for sanctions, Plaintiff attorney Todd Flaming, had Tom O’Connor of Gulf Coast Legal Tech Center testify on the disappearance of documents, metadata and hypertext links scrubbing, and the disadvantages of obtaining documents in non-native formats.
Todd Flaming and Browning Marean appropriately pointed out the importance to adequately prepare for the meet and confer and the advantages to be accompanied by a knowledgeable IT resource in order for the pre-trial meeting to be efficient.

Judge Dixon referred the participants to Courts’ guidelines among which the Guidelines For State Trial Courts Regarding Discovery Of Electronically-Stored Information.

- JFDR

De Rico @ Techshow

I am more than happy to welcome my friend Jean-François De Rico on my blawg for the Techshow. Jeff will post on the sessions he attends. You will be able to get more information on the different sessions as I can't be everywhere (yet!). Welcome Jeff and have fun!!

Techshow Live!

We are currently being welcomed by Tom Mighell in the Grand Ballroom (and Grand, it is!). He is filling us on what's hot and cool at ABA this year and I will try, as much as possible, to do likewise for you!

Please note that many posts will be sent straight from my Blackberry, so no picture and no proof reading...

Between my posts, you can have a look at Techshow Buzz for updates on what is happenning. This is a new feature of this year Techshow that I am sure will be most useful to attendees and non-attendees.

Other new ways to keep current on the Techshow:

Want to see what is happening: Flickr tag Techshow
Want to go to referred websites: Del.icio.us tag Techshow
Want to know who is doing what: Twitter

Enjoy!!

Jaar @ leg@l.IT

Ok, so my blog is almost dead... Well, that is because I am working on something more important!! As some of you know, I preside the organisation of Leg@l.IT, Canada's premier conference on IT for Law which will take on April 21st in Montreal.

For its second edition, Leg@l.IT offers three tracks from which you can choose: case study, practice and tools. Have a look at the amazing program and at the incredible faculty!!

For more information, go to the website.

Register quickly because there are only 200 places!