So, there I was Wednesday evening at my monthly L.A. County Bar Association Litigation Inn of Court gathering. I'm standing in the buffet line and who ends up standing next to me? The Honorable Carl J. West! For those of you who have followed this blog since its inception (that would be all of you, right?), you may recall I wrote about judge West's panel at Legalworks.
Of course, I did the only thing one would do in a situation like this; I forced him to talk to me and give me a few tidbits for you! Judge West graciously obliged, and told me he was a bit surprised at how he became known as one of the "e-discovery judges". He said it really all started with his involvement with The Sedona Conference, but admitted "I think I know five percent more about technology than most other judges".
I pointed out to Judge West that the extra five percent automatically makes him an expert by virtue of knowing more and we had good chuckle over that. He also surprised me when he mentioned that his larger concerns were with attorneys who come before him. He said many times it's obvious that they have no idea what e-discovery is or what they're supposed to do about it. He said, "They really don't know that they don't know, and I usually end up advising them to get technology experts."
My signature line has always been, "Know what you don't know." Great. Did I 'steal' it from judge West or did he 'steal' it from me? I think I'm covered. We both stole it from Confucius!
