Will the real Jeff Lendino please stand up?

If New York is so good they named it twice, then our in-house counsel, Jeff Lendino, must be even better than New York as here he is in triplicate. Like some David Beckhamesque Adonis, there he was plastered on billboards and elevator doors all over the Hilton reception during last week’s LegalTech conference in New York.

For those of you not aware of the conference, this is THE biggest Ediscovery /Information Governance event of the year. It’s held over 3 days and there are around 10,000 attendees (yes, that’s ten thousand); a packed agenda of 8 separate educational tracks; close to 200 exhibitors; and countless events, lunches and dinners provided by sponsors to their clients and guests over the course of the three days. For newcomers and old hands alike this can be an overwhelming event.

Kroll Ontrack itself had more than 50 attendees including our MD from APAC, Kate Chan and three of us from Europe (Rob Jones, Orion Wisness and yours truly).

The main theme of the conference was around Information Governance (IG). IG is wide ranging and encompasses multiple disciplines including, but not limited to, Information Security, ediscovery, Compliance and Records Management. A great site to find out more information about this is www.iginitiative.com. Because of its wide ranging scope, it can be confusing and for sure, judging by the different comments, questions and opinions made by visitors to our stand, there are very diverse opinions about what IG actually is. It’s great for conferences to generate new discussions and there is no doubt that conversations around this topic have evolved considerably over recent years. However, I did feel there is a bit of a disconnect between what clients are asking for on a day to day basis (which is mostly good old fashioned ediscovery) and what is actually being talked about in respect of the IG discipline.. We found that the questions most often asked were regarding global ediscovery capabilities. An increase in cross border disputes and investigations together with greater focus on data privacy has driven these enquiries.

We ran a couple of plenary session on predictive coding and on managing successful global ediscovery projects. Whilst it doesn’t seem to be flavour of the month at the moment, there was standing room only at our predictive coding session so there is still huge interest in this.

LegalTech was a really enjoyable experience. It was great to have the opportunity to spend time with our colleagues as well as clients.  This is the one time in the year where a lot of them are together in one place at one time.  The value in this aspect is not to be underestimated.

As for Jeff, I’m still not sure if the real one is drinking the coffee or giving himself a tribal tattoo!