Name: Shaping the Future of Government Ediscovery: Trends, Challenges, and Innovations
Uploaded: 2025-05-14T17:16:08.894Z
Duration: 1 h 4 s
Description: Shaping the Future of Government Ediscovery: Trends, Challenges, and Innovations

Transcript for "Shaping the Future of Government Ediscovery: Trends, Challenges, and Innovations": Hello, everyone, and welcome to Everlaw Connect Virtual Government Forum twenty twenty five. If you don't know me, my name is Zack Souza. I'm the senior customer marketing manager here at Everlaw, and I'm really happy to be hosting the third, annual government forum. So it's been a couple years now and really excited to see everybody in attendance today. Before we hand it off to Jessica Sahn for some opening remarks, I am gonna just cover some brief housekeeping rules so that you know how to operate and work the platform you you see in front of you right now. First of all, I do wanna say that all of today's sessions are gonna be recorded. So keep in the lookout for an email that will be sent to you about twenty four hours after today's event airs. That will have a link to all of the on demand recordings that you can go back to and rewatch at your leisure. I'm gonna move on next to some of our webinar chat features. On the right hand side of your screen, you should see a session chat. This is where you can say hi to other attendees, tell people where you're coming from today, make any commentary on today's session. And if you have any specific questions to the topic, you can actually submit those in the q and a tab. So on the right hand side, a little farther away from our session chat, we have our q and a tab. This is the best place to submit questions. If there are any questions that show up in the session chat, we might not be able to get to them. Lastly, I'm gonna call out the docs tab. We have a lot of great information for you today, and a lot of that is stored in some related resources here in the docs tab. The first one I wanna call out is our event FAQ document. So if you have any general questions about today's event, you know, how do I ask a question, how do I get to the next session, in case you get lost, that FAQ document is gonna have all of those frequently asked asked questions for you to refer to. So please keep that close just in case. We wanna make sure you have all the information you need just in case you drop out, lose inter net connection and you didn't reconnect. The last thing I'm gonna call out on that note is that if you are lost at any point, you don't know where the next session is happening, the agenda tab at the top of your screen is, like, your master list of all the sessions going on today. Always find your way back there, and you can join the session that's happening live. In the docs tab, you'll also notice a link to the Everlaw eDiscovery community. If you're not already a member, now is a great time to join. You can engage with other peers in your network there. And, you know, you're already doing that by being in attendance today surrounded by other members of the public sector. All of our, users that are out there in government, this is the place to be. So continue that in our broader community and even in the dedicated, government space that we have there. If you're interested in future virtual events, I am excited to talk about our AI and ediscovery webinar series coming up. It's a two part series. We're gonna have one session in June talking about predictive coding and then a follow-up session on effective AI prompting with with prompting, which is useful for any LLM usage. So keep an eye out for that. There's also a link to register for both of those sessions in the docs tab. Lastly, we're very excited, to begin planning for and talking about Everlaw Summit twenty twenty five. So if you don't know, Everlaw Summit is officially open in terms of registration. It's a three day in person event in San Francisco from October 21 to the twenty third of this year. Come together for education, connection, inspiration. It's really a great in person event. And, as you can see on your screen there, we have a special code for public sector, attendees, summitgov. If you use that at checkout, you can get unique government pricing for all of your dates. So we can't wait to see you there. We will we wanna see you in person as much as possible. And, with that, I will close my housekeeping section and hand it off to Jessica for our welcome. Good morning, and welcome to the third annual Everlaw Connect Virtual Government Summit. It is so great to have fellow legal professionals dedicated to advancing government litigation here with us today. As a quick introduction, I'm Jessica Shane, and I oversee our state, local, and education team here at Everlaw. I'm excited to kick off an engaging and insightful day and, look forward to introducing you to some of the key topics we will be discussing. I first want to kind of set the stage, and we're gonna be talking about both some of the challenges that our clients face as well as some of the opportunities ahead of them. We want to acknowledge a couple of key challenges we hear about from our clients. One of the top challenges is growing data volumes with a more diverse type of data involved in litigation. This, combined with an increased need for effective change management and government litigation, are the themes we'll center around today. We want to frame challenges as opportunities and create space for innovation and improvement. The event purpose is to explore navigating changes, learn from one another, shape the future of and shape the future of data driven public sector litigation. What we hope you'll gain today is to hear from panelists on today's pressing legal challenges. We also hope that you get practical tips and tactics from peers for immediate application and discovery in litigation. I do wanna provide a heartfelt thank you from us here at Everlaw to our existing customers in the public sector space and acknowledge your role on the forefront of new issues, and and communicating that to us and helping share the challenges involved in public sector litigation. We hope the event provides valuable insights in overcoming some of these challenges. And Everlaw, as always, wants to be, available to you as a resource and a partner. So a quick overview of today. There are four sessions. In session one, we'll discuss shaping the future of eDiscovery, the primary factors impacting discovery, litigation and work flows and things you can do now and how to plan for the future. In session two, we'll discuss organizing case strategy, a start to finish approach, real world examples and best practices from experience. In session three, we'll discuss advanced document analytics using tools like Everlaw's predictive coding and data visualization for efficient review and discovery. And in session four, we'll have a panel. We'll discuss collaboration throughout a project's life cycle and the crucial connect connection between legal and tech teams for complex data. So without further ado, I want to welcome our first session's panelists to the stage. Today we have Eric Kolbeck with us. Eric serves as a liaison between the legal and technology teams of the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General. His role includes developing case strategy related to the collection, review, and production of information, and he has previous experience in digital forensics. Joining him, we have Jennifer Baumann, the associate county counselor and administrative law manager for St. Louis County. Jennifer is responsible for managing the county's ediscovery system and processes, records retention, support staff, and so much more. And last but not least, we have Sean Hert, litigation support project manager at the Office of the Ohio Attorney General. Sean has experience giving insight into the ediscovery issues of complex litigation and multi district litigation, as well as the various needs and demands faced by state's attorney generals in the increasingly important sector of ediscovery. Okay. Well, let's begin by talking about the changing ediscovery landscape in government. I don't think this is ever not gonna be a topic of conversation, because it seems like we're we're constantly monitoring changes. So, I'd love to hear what challenges you're encountering in government eDiscovery. So I can go first. I think one of the things that, you know, we're constantly looking at evaluating, right, is we have complex solution problems. Right? And we're always looking for solutions to those, but we're constrained by our budgetary, limits. Right? So how do we take some of these very complex things and figure out ways to resolve them. Right? And at the same time, our technology might not be there on every, aspect as, say, a private company, right, or in the private sector. So we still have things where we're trying to figure out, okay, these old PDFs, old technology. How do you deal with that as we're working our way through modern pieces of technology? Right? You know, so and there's times when we have things and they're like, okay, how do I deal with this thing that was very prominent and popular twenty, thirty years ago, but I'm still dealing with today. Right? And how do we address that going forward? Some of the challenges we're facing, are there's some old challenges and some new ones. So the old are the data volume. Right? It's just constantly growing. Seems like nobody wants to, get rid of their data, or set retention on it. We we just we have data sprawl. We just have clients and, you know, we're guilty of this ourselves, so we're just creating more and more data. And so that's a challenge to collect that, to, to to load it, process it in, to search it. So that's sort of an old challenge that I think will continue to remain. I know we're gonna talk about AI later on, but the emergency the emergence of AI is also sort of a new challenge for us. Right? As we have agency clients that are using generative AI tools to generate more content, We need to understand, you know, do they have the tools and the expertise to go in and figure out what those prompts were and what the outputs were if we're asked in discovery? How did this policy get generated? Was it was was a GenAI tool, used to generate this official government policy? And then the other, challenge I would just talk about is the need for sort of efficiency across government collaboration. So one of the things we've been doing here in Minnesota over the last couple of years is get a statewide Everlaw contract. Prior to that, every agency would procure their own tool and, you know, we would all kind of be speaking different languages in terms of sharing data. And while tools are, you know, we can share data and and and export it and exchange it, it it did, create some inefficiencies to all be referring to things in different ways. And so over the last two years, we've had really good success having that statewide contract that agencies can can buy an Everlaw subscription. And if they leave our office and join an agency or vice versa, right, they're familiar with the platform when they come in. When we ask them, you know, who's the custodian of this data or, you know, what what are the specs for production? They actually understand what we're talking about now because they have hands on the tool. So we're really excited to see that continue to grow, get more agencies in there using it, not necessarily for litigation, but for their needs, right, for pre litigation activities or for public records. So those are some of the challenges that we're that we are, facing right now. So it sounds like, the ability to have everybody kinda speaking the same language, in terms of collaboration across agencies, but also, you know, probably how you're training and enabling, which which we'll get to too as a part of that change management. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, meeting people where they're at. Right? Not just forcing a litigation training on on somebody who's more of a transactional attorney or somebody who's doing public records. It doesn't make sense to walk them through an entire litigation workflow that you can use Everlaw for. Instead, you wanna meet folks where they're at, right, and start to kind of build incremental, buy in from them. And so tailoring your training and your workflows to their specific needs absolutely helps, ensure that we get we get buy in and that they feel successful and wanna come back and use the application to be done. Yep. That's great. Sean, what about you? I'd love to hear from you. Well, I know one of the challenges that we're facing nowadays, is from both defendants who have non Outlook for their emails, so Gmail or some sort of online email system, as well as both our clients and hospital defendants who have any sort of file management system. And then when we're dealing with emails or perhaps chat or other ephemeral conversations, is the hyperlink documents that show up. And how do we handle hyperlink documents? Case law has been somewhat inconsistent about that and definitely, depends on which which court you're in, federal or or local and and state. And you you can do some of those. The judges have their own sort of rules on how we handle hyperlink documents. Do we produce them? You know, are they collected and produced at the time of collection? Was that the same document that was actually present when the person originally got the email or got the communication? How does that fall under preservation notices? How do we handle the preservation notice alongside, our meet and confer process? Who's the custodian of that hyperlink document? Who's gonna be responsible? And if it's outside your organization, you have no control over who may be the custodian of that hyperlink document that was part of that communication. And as we become more reliant on how do we preserve those hyperlink documents and discuss who's the custodian of them. The the line between sort of self collection and normal sort of a of a more defensible collections gets more and more blurred. And who's responsible for the retention of those ephemeral communications. You know, if you're using Teams or using Google Chat or Slack, any of those sorts of systems, you know, the the individual custodian usually isn't the actual custodian of record for those communications. They're handled by their IT or some sort of centralized agency. And so far, the case law has been pretty clear that an organization doesn't, doesn't get out from underneath the thumb. Right? Just just because a custodian might not have control of it, the the the organization is still on the hook for maintaining those records. But the the breadth of what they're on the hook for, is growing. And I don't think that everyone's, I don't think that pre retention schedules and preservation letters have fully caught up with the language that's gonna be required for that. Yeah. That's super insightful. Thank you. You know, I I think, we also wanna talk about leveraging technology for smarter discovery and mitigation. And so, you know, you you've all kind of started to touch on this and how the technology is transforming your government ediscovery workflows. But would love to, you know, kind of double click on that and and hear from each of you how, how technology is transforming this, you know, given, obviously, new data types, given different needs, different types of cases, you know, different forms of collaboration. How how does tech, come into play? Well, I think Eric started to touch on this earlier. Right? Is that we have to look at the tools and use the tools that we have to their fullest extent. And so we look at them and say, how can I use this tool in this situation even if it wasn't what that tool was designed for? Right? We really have to adapt to that to make sure that we're using things in the most efficient manner possible. Right? So if that means that we're creating knowledge bases. Right? Or, in our case, we've created an opinion database. I think Eric has done something similar there in Minnesota. Right? So that is twofold. Right? We're we're leveraging that for an advanced search technology against the documents that might go back fifty or sixty years. Right? So it allows us to be very efficient and robust in our work. It also allows our attorneys who might not be litigators to get in there and understand the technology so that if we need them to get in there in the future to use it, that the technology is available to them. It's not, just familiar to to them. Right? It's not unfamiliar to them. So I really think that, you know, we have to to kinda think outside of the box when we're looking at the tools that we have available and say, what else can I do with this? Right? You know, and I think that that's what we've been able to do with Everlaw in a lot of ways. Right? We've created that opinion database. We're working on creating other knowledge databases. Right? We find that there's things that are often, used in litigation on a regular basis. How can we have them at our ready fingertips, right, and use them again over and over? How can we use the custom metadata features in Everlaw to get us to somewhere else that we need to be? And in fact, I had to do that on a case the other day where someone was like, I don't think it's possible to do x. And we went into the tools and figured out a way to get x done because we were able to create something on the back end that got it accomplished for them. So I really think that that's important to make sure that we're flexible to get to the efficiency that we need and get people in there, as much as possible. Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned that. We learn a lot from our clients, different use cases, different ways to be able to use Everlaw for things that maybe we it wasn't even designed for, but it's super useful for them. And we can kind of share that with with other clients. And so being flexible and innovative, it's it's not just about taking, you know, an old workflow and exactly mirroring it in a tool. Right? It's it's looking at that workflow and saying, okay. How can we actually sort of, you know, flip that on its head and be more efficient using technology? So, I know you've you've done a really great job with that. Right. I think it's really important that we try to look like, what is the end result that we're trying to get to, and then how do we use these tools to get us there. And we had a case recently where we had to do something, and we ended up having to take it in three separate pieces because one tool wouldn't get us there. But we took three separate tools to get us to the end result because that's what we had to do. So really working within what we have to get to what is the thing we really need to get to. From our perspective, you know, we're really trying to minimize the amount of hops it takes to get data from one place to the next. Right? I feel like we spend so much of our time just moving data around. Right? Collecting it from our clients, whether that's in a file share, whether they're sending us emails, whether they're sending us a, you know, physical media with the data on it. Sometimes we need to collect our own data if we're bringing affirmative litigation, right, where our our office is bringing perhaps a consumer protection action where we're both the law firm and the client, if you will. And, and then obviously, we're producing data out, to various parties. And so one of the things that we, are really excited to start leveraging is some of the native cloud connectors in Everlaw. And recently, the Microsoft Purview connector came online. So when we use Microsoft Purview to search our own, you know, Microsoft tenant for emails and chat data that we need to collect, for ourselves. We can now run that search, run the export in Purview, and we can pull that data directly over the cloud, into Everlaw. And so prior to that integration, you know, we'd have to download the data, save it, and then reupload it and turn it around, you know, put it into Everlaw. And so that doesn't seem like a a huge improvement. Right? But when you're doing that multiple times per day and you're talking about hundreds of gigs or terabytes of data that you're that you're just sort of shifting around constantly, all of those little, like, incremental few seconds, few minutes absolutely add up over the course of the day or a month or a case. The other sort of, I guess, newer developments that we're using technology for is public repositories when cases are over. So it used to be that, you know, we would follow the standard EDRM sort of life cycle. Right? You have the identification and the collection and preservation, and you work all the way down to the production of data. And, you know, when a case settled or the trial was over and we had an opinion, you know, our role is let's support folks to sort of winding down at that point. Right? We're we're working to, you know, export the data, clean up databases, and and sort of move on to the next project. And one of the things that I think is unique to government now is is that, a lot of, organizations are wanting to create public repository, repositories for this data. And so, for the public to to access, for, academics to access, for for journalistic reasons. And so it's not just that the case is over now, it's a whole separate set of requirements and negotiation that happens. Right? What documents are going into this repository? Who's hosting it? Who's paying for it? How long is it going to be up? Which of the documents is it? Is there another pro privilege review that's being performed? Is it, is it just trial exhibit? Right? So there's there's so much more that's happening after a case is quote, unquote over now that wasn't sort of a normal process, for a lit support person, at least in our office, let's say, you know, ten years ago. We're really excited to, identify tech solutions and to assist in that role, but it's definitely a new a new responsibility that we're still kind of figuring out. Right? There's many other parts of of the ediscovery process where there's sort of defined tools that you can pull out of your toolbox to make that happen. And this is one that we're still figuring out, you know, what is the best practice? What is the ideal way? What is the most efficient way to, to tackle this new this new challenge? Yeah. It's so true. So much, especially for large, you know, very publicly interesting cases gets archived at a university and, you know, is made available from from a journalistic perspective. That's something that we're seeing a lot more of, as well and working, you know, both with sort of, like, the the journalist community as well as the the higher education community. So it is so much different. You don't just take all of that information and it goes away, and nobody cares anymore. So Yeah. I mean well, I mean, here in Ohio, you know, we've loved using Everlaw for a long time as for sort of nontraditional or unconventional, solutions. StoryBuilder has been great for that, where we can use that for more than just your sort of classic building the story or doing for demo prep, but all sorts of other utilizations. And our users tend to still like the messaging system in Everlaw and using that for a lot of collaborative, sort of communications back and forth. And, I, however, do not look forward to the day that I have to somehow, pull communications from Everlaw to perhaps maybe produce that or, have that reviewed if it's not in their Outlook. But, you know, it's, we we look at what's coming with new technology, new applications, new apps, and different users are slowly becoming more and more technologically savvy. And so they're asking more and more questions about, okay, what is this AI thing I keep hearing about? How can I use that? Hey. What is this predictive coding thing in Everlaw? Is that something that we can that we can be u utilizing? You know, there all sorts of different ways that they can reach out and and, you know, one of the things I know that concerns us in government is, you know, how AI is going to be working, how do we control that, how do we control the costs. So, you know, as we look at new technologies and, how that can sort of aid us in cost savings, but there's actually an associated cost as well still with these new technologies. And so you have to sort of balance the initial outlay versus what's the what's sort of the the end result going to be of that. And in government, you know, we don't have quite the same concerns as a corporate universe does as far as, you know, your sort of a cost benefit analysis sort of thing. But we still do have, very serious cost concerns. You know? And it is a time of diminishing budgets. We have a it's a time of, you know, we're losing a lot of, federal monies that people had been reliant upon before and certainly certain agencies and some of our client agencies are seeing their budgets reduced. And so we have to find ways to make the technology we already have work better and smarter, and then looking at emerging technologies and perhaps being new shortcuts for for both us and our users. Yeah. And it's interesting too because there's a whole topic around, you know, using technology in lieu of human capital. And that's not to say that we're gonna put people out of jobs, but, you know, when we talk about all of these additional, you know, forms of data that are coming in and, you know, where a public records request or a piece of litigation might have been a few hundred gigabytes of data, now it's terabytes of data. And so, you know, there is that sort of okay. You know, the government doesn't have the flexibility of a private sector, organization to just go hire more attorneys to sift through it or more paralegals. And you kind of need to if you're gonna go toe to toe with, you know, opposing counsel or you meet the meet the requirements of your public records request. You sort of need technology to do that. So it is a it is a quandary. I would put a little plug in for Everlaw that we do have, provide a resource to to kind of help engineer that cost benefit for you and, you know, how do we maximize your dollars and and make sure that you're you're only buying what you need, but you're, you know, you're not being met with with unexpected expenses and things like that because we know that's an issue. So, yeah, it is it is a fine balance of of resourcing money and and being able to to get the results that you want for sure. Yeah. Like you mentioned, I mean, that's that's always the battle of government. Right? The other side usually got more money to throw at the problem than we do. So how do we, you know, leverage our technology and our people as best as we can? Yeah. Yeah. And how do you attract new how do you attract people? I mean, workforce, you know, workforce management, work for you know, trying to attract an effective workforce is a big part of it too, and I think technology plays into that. So, that's that's a big a big issue as well. Definitely. So Jessica, I just wanted to add one thing in with with what he just said. I mean, it's exactly right. I mean, if people going through law school now are getting hands on tools that a lot of government organizations don't necessarily provide. Right? And so if we're trying to be competitive in the workplace, we've gotta make the same tools available to to the newer generation of attorneys that are coming out of law school with with access to all of these tools, AI or not. Right? Mhmm. And, we know the big firms are providing it. Right? So in order to remain competitive, we we've gotta do the same. The other part I wanted to mention was just, you know, the folks like, how how do we meet people where they're at in terms of training and and the technology? And the last part I wanted to add to that was, you know, sometimes we have people approach us and and then we realize there isn't functionality in the platform yet that can sort of address that. And so we obviously make a note of that. We we send that to our, you know, customer success manager, and we've had a lot of instances where that feedback is actually incorporated into the platform. But we make a note of that internally, and we circle back to that user, whether it's a month, six months, or a year later. Right? And we say, hey. At the time, the platform couldn't address this specific need that you have. But, through the partnership, through communication, right, we we they they they heard us and they understand Everlaw understands the need to have this functionality in the platform now. And that's how we also get incremental buy in. And so there's more work on us to sort of maintain all of that, right, and keep all of that tracked, but, we've had several instances of success or maybe whether it's Everlaw or another tool. Right? Just kinda doesn't meet the need at that moment. Maybe you figure out a workaround, but but providing that feedback about how the platform can be better to meet our sometimes, government specific needs. We've had several instances where there's there's, product release, you know, that that have that new functionality. And that's my other plug. Like, I know Sean, Jennifer, and I have been doing this for for many, many years. So I think about the folks out there that are listening that are maybe, like, newer to eDiscovery and and how this can be very, overwhelming at times. And so, one of my practical tips is just to, like, skim through the release notes and see what's interesting. Right? Every month when a product release comes out, sort of skim through that and and and look to see is there something new in there that maybe you should give it a second look or go back in and and, and test that functionality. Collectively, all of our feedback ultimately helps make the platform better and doesn't mean that we've solved all the problems in all of our workflows. There's people in countering, you know, new things out there that we that we've never thought of before, but that collective partnership and feedback, helps lift us all up. Mhmm. Yeah. We appreciate that. And I and I feel almost bad saying what I'm about to say because you just paid Everlaw such a nice compliment. But, nobody's ever accused, you know, sort of the government or the legal industry as being nimble and, you know, forward thinking. So, you know, I think Everlaw but I think I think there is an opportunity to to think, to think differently. Right? And and look at, okay, you know, is using outside counsel for ediscovery, is using, you know, another a third party to manage a lot of this going to meet your financial ends and and and give you that flexibility to sort of, you know, know what the latest and greatest is and then immediately employ that and and implement that. And I think, you know, not just with eDiscovery but with any sort of technology, you know, that influences any workflow that you touch, like, being being able to identify partners that that give you that ability to be to be sort of nimble and flexible without a tremendous additional cost is is really beneficial. So Well, and if I could just touch on one thing that Eric said, right, which is the training. Right? Which is being nimble in that, right, and taking people where they're at. You're going to have people that are fresh out of law school who actually aren't that technology savvy, which is shocking, but it happens and we see that. Right? Or people who've been ex experienced lawyers who don't have that. But being able to take people and give them different kinds of training. Right? Whether that is in person one on one, whether that is written materials, whether that is a two minute reel, right, that gives you a snip of just one little thing that you're looking at or a hour long training video. Right? Taking those different pieces at different points in times gives different people those tools that they need, and I think that's important. Everlaw has that. Right? I think it's important to meet people where they're at or not all the same kind of learners. We're not all gonna be looking at the tools in the same way, and I think that's always important to look at is those different types of training that are available to people. Yeah. And and it's interesting. Not a lot of universities or law schools teach eDiscovery, which is, you know, crazy because it's such an integral part. But we're I mean, we have a Everlaw for Good program where we're trying to put, you know, licenses in the in the hands of law schools so they can at least have some exposure to it because I I do think that is important. Yeah. So so kind of the the final topic to to or maybe second to last, what do you think is next in government eDiscovery? How can, how can agencies or teams proactively build more resilient ediscovery strategies moving forward? So I always go back to kind of the nuts and bolts of things. Right? Which is failing to plan is planning to fail. Right? Whatever it is. Right? If you're launching a new program, or if you're managing a case or if you're thinking about a new problem that has entered your space. Right? Let's take some time to plan it. Right? How are we going to do this? Right? What is that process going to look at like? Right? What is our, critical path that we need to be along? Right? Where do we wanna end up and how are we gonna get there? And all too often, I think people, like, say, oh, I've got this immediate thing that has to happen. So we just jump right in, and then we end up not being as efficient on the back end or we've missed a step. Or people get frustrated at the end because they're like, well, this isn't doing what I wanted it to do because we haven't taken all that time, right, to put in a plan. And people will say, you know, it takes time to put that plan in place, but it's gonna save you time in the front end, and it's also going to give you that map of how you wanna get there. And I think that's still a critical thing. Right? But at the same time, right, we still need to be flexible. Right? Build that plan, but then as things come in and they change, be willing to be flexible about it. Right? And be willing to deviate from it and come up with a a new plan new plan. Right? And recognizing in the government space, right, on the one hand, we're dealing with a lot of technology. Right? So on one day any one day, maybe we've got body worn camera footage. Right? Or we've got, body worn, in car camera footage coming to us. Right? Or we've got, you know, instant messages. At the same time, I've got handwritten PDFs, right, that we have to scan in documents and we've got those, and we've gotta go through them at the same time. And those aren't always compatible together. Right? So how do we get through that process? Right? And then lastly, I think it's always important to have a data map. Right? Back to that, how do I plan for things? And not a lot of people take the time to go get a data map. Where is the data for this agency or this entity? Right? How long does it go back? Where are we storing it? What are the end users allowed to do? Right? Where are the places they can store to? Do they have the ability to write off onto, you know, a DVD or onto a thumb drive? Do they have the ability to save that to their desktop? Right? Do they have the ability to put stuff in cloud storage? Where are all those places? Know where the data is at. It's gonna save you time later on if you have that information already built out when you're going out to try to find this stuff when a new matter comes in. So I just really think, you know, take the time, try to plan, know where you're going. Yeah. Eric Sean, what about you? Yeah. I think Jennifer, summed it up nicely there. I would just say and there's still a lot of people that are agreeing to ESI protocols without understanding what they're agreeing to. Right? And so it's I I guess I sort of, use the analogy, like, if you see something, say something. Right? Like, if you don't know what you're agreeing to, right, like, you should ask the question before you agree to it. And so that's just sort of my, my plug is that we constantly say, like, we're we're here. We're a resource. We're available whether it's for our own internal staff or, clients or agencies in in our state or even other, you know, government agencies that are on, you know, a a different path. We're always happy to be a resource and sort of talk through the pros and cons of our approach, but, really just trying to move away from people agreeing to things about verifying that the tools that we have, and that the data we're dealing with sort of align with what they're getting the court to agree with. A lot of times, I feel like people, approach the discovery conference or the the ESI order is just sort of a box that needs to be checked. We'll deal with that, you know, down the road where, you know, a thirty minute or an hour conversation at the beginning probably could've, prevented a lot of the conflicts that come up months or years later. Mhmm. Yeah. Certainly. I mean, you know, sir, to add on something that you mentioned, Eric, it yeah. As we see our our these protocols getting agreed to, as we see new attorneys coming in who, on one hand, are more comfortable with technology and are when they're with social media and things like that, they're aware of people talking about Slack. They're aware of these different, communication methods and different workflow methods. Not all of our attorneys are familiar with it. And how do we handle that data, that's gonna be coming in in a nonstandard format? You know, we you know, something that's not a simple email plus an attachment in an email thread as we start looking at chat threads. And how do we handle those sorts of data? How do we handle these nonstandard forms of data? How do we handle, like like Jennifer mentioned, body cam footage? How does that fit into the narrative? How do we process this data? How does that these things become part of our overall strategy? Are we prepared for these, various different types of data that may be coming in? You know, I've said it before. I'm sure I'll be saying it the rest of my career is talk to your nerds early. You know? Talk to your your lead support people, whether it is a technical person or your lead support attorneys. Talk to them before you have that first meeting confer so you're ready for the communications, and you ask the right questions. You ask about creating a data map. You ask them about what software and applications they use beyond simple email. And, you know, be prepared for different vectors of information and documents that you may be needing to preserve and collect. And, where are the non traditional places that this information might be living. You know? I know with the government agencies, we have a lot of proprietary software that's built in house. How do we handle that? Making sure that that's documented. And, you know, and and going forward, making sure that our our attorneys continue to stay educated and aware of these things. Because, like, you're right, Jessica. They're they're not learning a discovery in law school. It's an issue that's existed for a while, and it continues to exist. And at the same time, we're getting more and more tech cases in government. You know, everyone has seen the recent litigations with Meta and and Google. You know, and these cases are not small. They tend to be, you know, large multi states. They intend to involve a lot of data and a lot of data that some of our government attorneys aren't used to working with. And so having discussions ahead of time and continuing to have those discussions as the litigations progress and making sure that everyone stays informed and making sure that we have a a good mix of attorneys on our teams. People who understand what we're dealing with is is important in making sure that we stay flexible, and and moving forward with our with our litigations. It's gonna be important. Yeah. I kind of equate it to, like, cooking a big meal. Like, you're not gonna do that in a messy kitchen without checking if you have the ingredients. You know? Gotta clean the kitchen, pull out the ingredients, you know, go shopping if you need to. But if you just enter your kitchen and just say, I'm gonna make paella, you're probably not gonna get the end result that you want. So Or food I I Yeah. You're just gonna have rice with some leftover chicken. Oh. Digging out. Jessica. Yeah. If I if I could go back to something that Eric and Sean both said. You know, Eric said, you know, I I wish people would know what to do with these protocols, right, and understand them. And it reminds me, right, that our ethical obligations, right, are to either understand it, associate with someone who does, or not take the case. Right? Those are our three options. As government lawyers, we don't get the option to not take the case. Right? So we really have to make sure we're either understanding it or associating with someone that does. Right? And I believe, Sean, it was a judge pack that would say, bring your geeks to court. Right? So not just go consult with them, but if you're not sure of it, bring that person with you to that twenty six f conference, right, to that status conference with the court. Bring them with you. Right? There is no shame in saying that somebody else has more knowledge in this area, and I'm going to rely on them. Right? I just really think that this moves us. So I love that. Bring your geek to court. Yeah. So so kind of, as a last topic, what are you seeing, where are you seeing adoption of AI and what, AI functionality will be the most relevant for your agency? So I'll jump in first. You know, AI is everywhere. It's not going anywhere. Everyone's sort of at a different stage with AI. There's, you know, there's articles every week about, AI being used incorrectly in the legal profession. Right? And I try to balance that out by finding positive articles, or new stories about how AI is, increasing access to justice or, you know, maybe helping with developments in the medical field or in in other in other areas. You know, I personally view it as it's just the the next new technology that's there. Right? Like, people freaked out when email was a technology, many, many years ago, but we figured out how to adapt to it, how to use it, or at least most of us, have. Right? So it's it's just the it's the new it's the new iteration of that. It is much more powerful. Right? And there's a lot of risks that go into it, especially when you're having it make decisions on behalf of, a government agency. Right? So there's there's, organizations that are trying to incorporate AI into, sort of like an adjudication process, right, where you're feeding it input and then it's kind of making a a determination. Do you qualify for benefits or not? And, so transparency is incredibly important with AI, understanding who, you know, has control of the data, who has ownership, how is that being passed along. We're really excited, for for AI with, with one of the tools that's in Everlaw right now that we're kinda currently doing some testing on, and that's the the sentiment analysis. So for our consumer protection cases, let's say that, you know, we open an investigation and, you know, there's allegations of deceptive business practices or fraud or things like that, and we get a document down above, let's say, a hundred thousand documents. Those are sometimes call recordings, their documents, their chat interactions. Right? Old school way was to start a doc one and sort of work your way through, right, or come up with a list of keywords of things that might show perhaps a negative interaction with an agent of that company. But what we're really excited about is being able to put that data in, run the sentiment analysis across it, and and then zero in on the instances where there's negative interactions. Because a lot of times that is where somebody's really frustrated. Right? They were promised something and then the company didn't deliver on it. And so we can zero in on those, those communications, those documents earlier on. We can reach out to those folks. They become our appiance. They become witnesses. Right? They they help us sort of build the case. So we're really excited about being able to put data in and and use that sentiment analysis to, you know, compartmentalize what are the positive things. We're still gonna look at that because we wanna make sure that, you know, we're bringing, you know, appropriate charges if we do file a case. But being able to zero in on the the swear words, the negative interactions, things like that is, is gonna be really powerful for us and and sort of a a a tool that helps fill the gap, if you will, when we're competing with large law firms that are not only using AI and other technology, but they have more resources. They have more financial resources. They have more people resources. So we're always trying to figure out, you know, what are the tools that we can use to help sort of equal the playing field out there. That's that's what we're most excited about with with AI. Yeah. We hear we hear a lot that, like, sometimes a supposing counsel in some of these really big cases almost weaponize large datasets. And, you know, they they sort of want you to to not be successful, because of how much. And so I think AI really the feedback we're getting anyways is that AI really helps sort of, you know, be, as we say at Everlaw, the smart intern. So, you know, it's not going to replace the fact that humans have to make judgments and and have input, but it does help sort of, get you from point a to point g instead of going b, c, d, and and all that stuff. So I know. A little bit oh, go ahead, Jennifer. No. Go ahead, Jennifer. No. I was just I was just gonna say, I think, what just building on that too is the question of what is AI. Right? We have court orders that say you have to disclose that you've used AI. But what what does that fuzziness mean? Does that mean every time I did a Google search, I have to disclose that in the court order? I did a Westlaw search. Right? I I'm using an ediscovery platform. And then so I think there's still a lot of fuzziness around. Right? What is it? What are people concerned about? What are the safeguards around it? And then what do I have to disclose, to meet those requirements of court orders, right, and my ethical obligations? So I think it's gonna be interesting to see how those things kind of evolve. I know that we have some concerns. You know, I think all of this has seen some of the the same things hit the news about issues with AI. You know, how does AI log, how it's interacting with the individual user questions they may be asking of AI. And those logs coming out with time date stamps that are very wrong. You know, wrong dates, wrong times, and things like that. How can you trust what you get from AI? And who owns who owns the the data that's in AI? I know that's a a big concern that we have in government is unless we have, like, an on premises, you know, instance of an LLM that we're paying for, how can we be entering in information into it? And knowing that, our constituents' private information is being protected or that an attorney's questions, you know, are are being withheld and protected and, being kept privileged. And, you know, and and as Eric mentioned earlier, you know, we see the same thing in Ohio. Sometimes we are on both sides of the case. How do we make sure that we have an internal wall? It's easy to put, you know, Sean and his people on one side and Eric and his people on the other side of of a wall ethical wall to work on a case. But how does we make sure that AI doesn't somehow let information slip between them if we're utilizing an AI tool? You know, and in Everlaw, you know, each instance of of AI is sort of unique to the to the matter, and we know that Everlaw and how it handles the need is is pretty safe. But Everlaw is not the only AI tool out there that's getting utilized and, making sure that you have policies in in place and that you, understand that everybody in your office understands the policy and that your policies makes makes sense and that they stay nimble with this ever changing environment of of AI and what it is and and how it's going to impact the practice well. Yeah. I think it's it's super important to understand not only, you know, like, what what does the what does AI mean in terms of whatever vendors you're looking at for whatever end results, but also, you know, what are the boxes that you've identified, to check to to make sure that any sort of LLM is within the four walls of that case, and it's not something where constituent data is going to be, you know, leaving that. And so it it does present an additional challenge, I think, for, for government legal teams, to say this is a really great tool, but we we wanna be thoughtful about it. But also, everybody who works for this office don't just go, you know, rogue and go start using tools that, you know, it's it's it's easy to have shiny object syndrome. Right? Like, it's it's so powerful. But, again, it goes back to the kitchen analogy. You know? Buy buy the good ingredients. So, great. Well, I think that about wraps it up. Does anyone have any closing thoughts, or or words of wisdom before we, turn it over to the next session? I would just say that, I mean, we're all we're all in this together, and so, I really appreciate having opportunities to share, share war stories, share wisdom, right, share, even if it's somebody else learning from a mistake that we made. And so I will just sort of put out there that I'm happy to be a resource for any, you know, any government agency that, has questions or wants to, you know, check-in. I know there's there's groups of of folks at the attorney general level that sort of regularly check-in, and I I I hope that there's opportunities for local government and and other, you know, government, agencies to sort of connect together. I would also just plug, Summit. I know it can sometimes be really difficult to get approval to travel, especially when budgets are tight, but, being able to connect in person and and learn and develop these relationships. I mean, Sean and I communicate pretty frequently, and and it's just all about sharing the knowledge. And we're we're all at different places on this journey, but, the more we help each other, the the the better it is for all of us. I love that. We're in this booth together, and we have a lot of similar issues and similar problems, and it's great to hear other people's solutions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's it's great. I mean, you know, Jennifer being on the local government level, you guys at the state level, it's our goal to sort of connect the dots, you know, in in both directions. And we love our our community of Everlaw government customers, and we will continue to connect you and continue to learn from you. So I really thank the three of you for being here today, sharing some of your insights. Definitely encourage continued collaboration, and, hopefully, I will see all three of you at Summit. Thanks, Jessica. Thanks, Jessica. Alright. Thank you to our panelists for such an insightful opening discussion. I know I took away some interesting things. It's interesting to really think about how to leverage technology that you already have access to, and, you know, maybe even finding creative out of the box of ways to address those use cases that you haven't considered yet. Right? Really making use for everything you're paying for, everything you have access to, to to get all the efficiency out of it as you can. I know it won't be the last time we hear about the increasing data volumes out there, the emergence of AI generated content, and the need for better collaboration across agency as our panelists discussed. So, these are all key challenges happening right now, and we're gonna get to see them unfold in the world of eDiscovery. And we're right here working on that together. So, those in our audience, you know, we're we're gonna be finding ways to work together to find solutions for all of those things. So in just a few minutes, hang tight. We're gonna be going to our next session about advanced document analytics and tools like data visualization, grid decoding, and more. So we will have a short break, and we'll pick up in just a few. We'll see you there.