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SENIOR PARTNERS NEED TO GET WIRED
(NEW YORK, NY) - June 1, 2002
As electronic discovery replaces traditional paper discovery, senior legal practitioners need to change their attitudes about computers. Instead of being afraid to dirty their hands on a keyboard, they need to take a hands-on approach if they're going to get the most out of their client's and their opponent's digital information.

"For the last twenty years, I’ve grown accustomed to hearing senior practitioners brag about their technological ignorance," muses Michael Prounis, CEO of Evidence Exchange, a New York provider of electronic discovery services. "They consider any task involving a computer to be ministerial, and beneath them." But this mindset, which views the computer as nothing more than an updated typewriter for use by their secretaries, will cause them to miss or misinterpret potentially case-winning data. As Prounis puts it, "The all-stars may have to play catch-up on a problem case, long before they get to use their great legal skills and talents."

"Most of the 50+-year-old lawyers running 'the bet your company' cases have minions of paralegals or associates handling the documents," he explains. "The filtered collection is presented to the experienced trial practitioner as gospel. Yet, the senior practitioner probably knows little if any of the details of how this stack of paper or images was assembled." In those details lie "some of the most explosive strategic discovery weapons that have ever existed for plaintiffs and regulators!"

Prounis advises senior partners to take a good look at the "e-discovery time bombs" in recent highly publicized cases involving Microsoft and Enron. Such detonations have already cost companies billions, according to Prounis. Still, "the existence of the potential risk seems to fly under the radar screens of most senior practitioners, or has been categorized as being some trivial or gritty item that both sides should wish to ignore." Senior practitioners must upgrade these attitudes, or watch their skills become as obsolete as last year's software.

"Don’t ask, don’t tell" is clearly the wrong policy when it comes to electronic data. And, it's a policy that will self-destruct when digital discovery inevitably becomes a key issue in any 21st century litigation.

Contact:

Mike Prounis or Myron Eagle
Evidence Exchange
21 Penn Plaza
New York, NY 10001
(212) 594-2500
michael.prounis@evidenceexchange.com
myron.eagle@evidenceexchange.com

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