Summary of RELEVENT in Nashville

While I didn't have a chance to catch all the speakers at the RELEVENT (called the un-conference) in Nashville earlier this week, the ones I did see were great!  The topics for the conference varied from legal marketing to eDiscovery to cost control.  many of the speakers were able to offer real-world experience and scenarios, which added value to the talks.

Some of the highlights:

I have to say that Casey Flaharty from KIA motors did not disappoint.  After finding a little bit about his family, he moved on to how he holds his outside counsel's feet to the fire, using a test or "audit", mainly for the associates.  His perspective is that they are doing the majority of the often mundane work, so he wants them to have a minimum level of technology skill.  His test, which he says takes him less than an hour to complete, takes a shocking average of 5 hours for his outside counsel's associates to complete!  If they do poorly, he asks for a discounted rate.  Seem fair.

Babs Deacon gave an entertaining, yet thought-provoking talk about the state and future of eDiscovery.  After a few comments about the many problems relating to eDiscovery, she got to the nugget of her talk: Her philosophy that the future of review will take place in situ, or in place.  On other words, in the future, instead of doing discovery "productions", organizations will simply allow access to their data.  She admitted that there are several hurdles, but this was her vision.

Kelly Tigger, from ESI Attorneys, Inc. gave the audience an update on the latest intersections between the law and social media, mainly as related to eDiscovery.  Among other issues, she cautioned attorneys about automatic cross-posting (LinkedIN > Twitter > Pinterest > Facebook).  She prompted an interesting discussion about appropriate use of social media by attorneys as well as the pitfalls of social medai in eDiscovery.

There several other informative panels that discussed topics from legal marketing, to law school curricula to entrepreneurship.  This is definitely a conference to keep an eye on as I believe many more of the industry movers and shakers, as well as us regular folks, will be looking to share their ideas and experiences.  Check cicayda.com for the next RELEVENT.