The ethical duty of technology competence officially arrived in nation’s capital April 7, when the District of Columbia Court of Appeals formally approved revisions to its rules of professional conduct that identify technology…
more
/ Law Practice Products & Services
Recent amendments to the federal rules governing pretrial discovery encourage courts to be more aggressive in squelching wasteful discovery practices. Litigators should be mindful that judges are increasingly taking the rules…
more
/ Civil Procedure, Law Practice Products & Services
New court rules went into effect in Massachusetts last month that authorize remote depositions whenever the party noticing the deposition elects that format. A prior proposal to make in-person depositions the default option was…
more
/ Civil Procedure, Law Practice Products & Services
Long maligned as innovation-shy, litigation practices are deploying emerging artificial intelligence technologies at a rapid rate. Technology’s ability to instantly synthesize and draw useful conclusions from large amounts of…
more
/ Law Practice Products & Services, Privacy
The rule seems simple enough: Attorneys defending a witness during a deposition may instruct the witness not to answer questions only for the purpose of protecting privileged information. And yet, if the number of trial court…
more
/ Civil Procedure
Promotional material for a continuing legal education program on deposition practice that crossed our desk recently gave a “pros and cons” assessment of remote versus in-person depositions. And while the authors took care to…
more
/ Civil Procedure, Law Practice Products & Services
We have been writing about the personal traits and professional skills litigators need to be successful in pretrial discovery practice for a long time. Whether it’s offering tips on how to master remote depositions, pointing out…
more
/ Civil Procedure, Electronic Discovery, Law Practice Products & Services
Everything is bigger in Texas. Even pretrial discovery rules, which permit depositions to be taken merely for the purpose of investigating whether a lawsuit should be filed. No state is more permissive when it comes to pre-suit…
more
/ Civil Procedure, Law Practice Products & Services
The apex deposition doctrine is a judge-made rule that protects company executives from harassing, repetitive depositions in cases in which the executive has little relevant evidence to provide. Courts applying the doctrine…
more
/ Civil Procedure, Electronic Discovery
“The irony.”
So wrote federal district judge Laura M. Provinzino when she rejected as unreliable an artificial intelligence expert’s report that was found to have contained three non-existent, AI-generated citations. The…
more
/ Civil Procedure, Law Practice Products & Services, Science, Computers, & Technology
Revised Minnesota pretrial discovery rules, which took effect Jan. 1, now encourage remote depositions by allowing them to be set by notice alone. Former practice required either a court order or stipulation…
more
/ Civil Procedure, Electronic Discovery, Law Practice Products & Services
New Jersey appears poised to become the next state to explicitly add a duty of technology competence to its professional code of ethics. Proposed revisions to the New Jersey Rules of Professional Conduct would, if adopted, make…
more
/ Law Practice Products & Services
The devastating wildfires that raced through southern California these past few weeks caused loss of life, property damage in the billions of dollars, and upheaval in the lives of millions of Americans who live in that region…
more
/ Civil Procedure, Law Practice Products & Services
The blog post Turning Deposition No-Shows to the Client’s Advantage proved popular with our readers when written (2021!) and for years afterward. The sustained readership of that article is gratifying but also disappointing to…
more
/ Civil Procedure, Law Practice Products & Services
Last week’s blog recounted the story of a litigator surprised by the unannounced, off-camera presence of the witness’s mother in the room during her son’s remote deposition. That should never have happened and, in modern…
more
/ Civil Procedure, Electronic Discovery, Law Practice Products & Services
