NYC Survives My ESI-in-Bankruptcy War of Aggression

The panel presentation on Bankruptcy and E-Discovery, hosted by NYCLA, went off without a hitch. Although the rain and the Monday evening schedule may have kept away some less-committed tire kickers, the presentation was well attended and seemed to be very well received.
Even with the wide range of perspectives and experience the panel brought to the table, I must say that Judge Andrew Peck is even more impressive in person than through his written opinions. Mark Foley, of Foley and Lardner, kind of stole the show though. Aside from the fact that he is clearly a world class lawyer, he has lots of neat James Bond toys and entertaining war stories to match. Kudos also to Bruce Weiner and Todd Duffy, who were able to officiate while Jack Seward and I played battling microphones.
Based on some of the comments from the crowd, as well as some of the discussions among even the panel, it is clear that the bankruptcy bar has a long way to go before reaching the level of education, technical competence, comfort and perspective that would keep me satisfied (or at least quiet). Once bankruptcy attorneys consider the kind of value they can add to their services by addressing ESI as an issue of estate administration rather than a litigation issue, it is just a matter of time until the organic growth in bankruptcy practice and ESI issues resembles Google stock prices during its IPO.
Sadly there is never enough time to cover everything that needs to be covered, and that was certainly true in our case as well. One of the big issues that we didn't get to was the proposed Federal Rule of Evidence 502, addressing waiver of privilege through involuntary disclosure. The proposed rule flies in the face of the current Department of Justice policy, and even has some interesting comparisons and contrasts to the proposed Attorney-Client Privilege Protection Act of 2007. There should be an article about the likely applications and impacts of proposed Rule 502 in bankruptcy in the upcoming Texas Bar - Bankruptcy Section newsletter...
The second item we didn't get to was the ethics opinions from New York and from Florida regarding attorney's obligations regarding the care and feeding of the metadata of others. I made a promise to Richard Carmody, which I intend to keep, so look for that next week.
Finally, I guess it really is true that every dog gets his 15 minutes of being in the bush with two birds, or something like that... it seems that my old friend Jack Seward managed to sneak one by the editorial staff at the ABI, and got me mentioned on page 54 of the June 2007 ABI Journal. More scandalous than Paris getting prematurely released from lock-up!