David Horrigan, Discovery Counsel and Legal Education Director at Relativity

David Horrigan (https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-horrigan-3a482a6/) joins Brian Roberts (https://www.linkedin.com/in/beeberts/) in the Attorney Lounge (https://linktr.ee/attorneylounge) for a discussion about David’s career and the history and background of e-Discovery and his work at Relativity (https://www.relativity.com/).

David grew up as a kid interested in genealogy and the law, actually visiting courtrooms with a briefcase to research geneaology records. David talks about attending Levin College of Law at the University of Florida where he currently serves on the Board of the UF Law E-Discovery Conference. After graduating law school, David took a non-traditional path and began his career as a reporter at The National Law Journal. Immersed in all things e-Discovery, David discusses how he makes an effort to make the topic fun and engaging. Brian and David share some stories of practicing law in higher education as David spent time early in his career representing Brown University and Brian spent a decade as the General Counsel for Grand Canyon University.

David explains how he became interested in e-Discovery and learned about legal technology during the September 11 attacks when he was a reporter at the National Law Journal and was one of only two reporters to make it down to Ground Zero, writing for many days on the 9/11 attack and the resulting impact on the e-Discovery industry. As Discovery Counsel and Legal Education Director at Relativity, David talks about how he gets to enjoy the best of both worlds as a lawyer and journalist by researching, writing and presenting across the country on the world of e-Discovery.

David advises law students and young attorneys to keep your options open early in your career and consider e-Discovery as a career. He talks about the intersection of law and technology and how quickly the industry has changed in a very short period of time beginning with major amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 2006 where the rules were modified to make clear that emails fell into the definition of what was discoverable in civil proceedings, followed by the Da Silva Moore case in 2012 where Judge Peck blessed technology assisted review, and up to today where ChatGPT has caused an explosion in the use and interest in artificial intelligence in the world of legal technology. David talks about how many e-Discovery firms got their start as litigation copying firms and offers an interesting note that the company IKON stands for “I Know One Name,” which leads to an interesting discussion about the hidden meaning behind some corporate names and logos.

The discussion evolves into the history of e-Discovery, the early days of Concordance of Summation and the founding and history of Relativity which was originally named kCura (a mashup of “k” for knowledge and “cura”, the Latin root for management). Relativity understood early that the volume of electronic data was skyrocketing and the legal market needed a solution that could handle the unique demands of dealing with large amounts of data. Today, Relativity is a giant in the e-Discovery industry and annually hosts the popular Relativity Fest conference where industry leaders converge to discuss the latest developments in the industry. David discusses the implementation of AI into e-Discovery and the tools that Relativity has been developing to stay out in front with the latest technology to meet the needs of clients. Given all of the advancements in technology and its rapid adoption in the legal industry, Brian and David have an interesting discussion on the future of law and how they expect it to evolve going forward.

Last, Brian and David discuss the future of legal operations and the opportunities that exist for enterprising young entrepreneurs and attorneys. The rapid development of legal ops has led to an explosion of opportunities in that field and the exciting career opportunities that have developed recently.

Please visit the links below for more information on David, Brian, Relativity and Array, who serves as the host sponsor of The Attorney Lounge.

Links:

David Horrigan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-horrigan-3a482a6/

Brian Roberts: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beeberts/

Relativity: https://www.relativity.com/

Array: https://www.trustarray.com

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