Canadian Lawyer

E-DISCOVERY I never had that disaster, because I learned so much, and took it on as a pet project before I had a major issue on a file," says Friedman, a partner at Davis LLP. At that time, e-discovery as an issue had barely reached Canada, and while it has now gone mainstream, and Ontario's Rules of Civil Procedure now K reflect best practices developed by Sedona Canada, Friedman is still among a relatively select group of experts in the field. "Most lawyers associate e-discovery with document review, and managing that process in a cost-effective and efficient way," says Dera J. Nevin, e-discovery counsel and senior director of litigation support services at McCarthy Tétrault LLP. "That is certainly an important part of an e-discovery counsel's role. However, there is also a real need for counsel who are experienced in information governance and preservation in order to effectively manage the collection and preservation process. And as companies go global and personal and corporate technologies merge, there are legal issues associated with privacy and data mobility that require resolution." Another Robert Half Legal survey from SPECIALIZATION IN BUSINESS LAW Part-time, Executive LLM program for corporate counsel and practising lawyers March revealed e-discovery services are in demand: a third of law firms planned to increase spending on e-discovery over the next two years. Many are operating from a very low baseline, with 27 per cent of respondents saying their firm had no standard procedure to manage discovery requests. According to Friedman, project manage- ment is a large part of her job. Instead of allowing a dump of documents to be batched out at random to reviewers, she targets those that are most likely to be relevant, and groups the resulting disclosure by subject matter and time frame before sending them out to reviewers. "That way they can become an expert on that area and know what's impor- tant and what's not," she says. "I always talk about how you strategically use e-discovery principles to keep costs down, be really effi- cient, and produce quickly, so you can nego- tiate and get to a quicker resolution. Clients have pushed back. They won't just write you a blank cheque to allow you to spend two years going over documents." Nevin agrees that proper attention to For more information, call 416-978-1400 or visit: http://www.law.utoronto.ca/programs/GPLLM.html TIME: EVENT: Supported by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) - Ontario Chapter and in partnership with Carswell, a Thomson Reuters business. GLLM_IH_Apr_12.indd 1 30 JUNE 2012 www. CANADIAN Lawyermag.com 12-05-03 10:58 AM e-discovery plans ahead of time can save money for parties in the long run. "The major- ity of my work is strategic, and frequently occurs far in advance of any collection. In litigation and investigations, I work with cli- ents and litigation teams to sharpen the focus both of preservation obligations and collection efforts, and ensuring the parties' discovery plans are documented. Early attention to e-discovery issues can significantly lower costs for litigants parties, and ensure the litigation team has up-front access to critical documents required for case analysis." elly Friedman's career as e-discovery counsel was kick-started when a complex trial unexpectedly settled at the last minute, leaving her with a six-month gap in her schedule a decade ago. She convinced her firm to let her travel to an e-discovery conference in New York, giving her a head start on the burgeoning practice area that allowed her to escape the horror stories that come with most lawyers' first experience. "Most people learn by making some terrible mistakes, or having it thrown at them. I'm lucky

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