Continuing Legal Education for Attorneys. Elevate Practice. Track Legal Changes. Earn Credits.

Session I – Digital Evidence Without Devices: Leveraging Service Providers and Cloud Access – Brett Burney

The world of eDiscovery has changed dramatically over the last 10-20 years and it’s nearly impossible to keep up. On the other hand, it’s absolutely critical to understand the modern tools and workflows to keep costs manageable and provide defensible instructions to clients. Some of the biggest challenges in today’s eDiscovery landscape involve collecting text messages and linked files (aka “modern attachments”) but then comes the formidable tasks of reviewing and producing these new forms of ESI. You need to know your options for relying on the expertise of service providers, as well as understanding the capabilities of cloud-based tools that offer additional functions over their legacy software ancestors. This session will walk you through everything you need to know on maintaining defensibility and compliance with all your discovery obligations.

Key topics to be discussed:

• Best practices for proficiently reviewing and producing ESI
• Practical insights into cost-effective ESI management strategies
• Helpful guidance for vendor selection and oversight

Session II – Beyond the Surface: Unlocking Metadata to Authenticate and Attribute Cloud-Based Evidence – Daniel B. Garrie and J-Michael Roberts

In an age where mobile devices and cloud services dominate communication and collaboration, metadata has emerged as a linchpin in digital evidence strategy. This session explores how litigators can leverage metadata not just for technical completeness, but to establish timelines, authenticate cloud-stored documents, verify authorship, and support evidentiary admissibility. Daniel Garrie and J-Michael Roberts will walk through real-world use cases and practical frameworks for metadata preservation, discovery drafting, and courtroom presentation, including how metadata exposes data manipulation and helps attribute content to specific individuals even when the original device is unavailable. The session will also examine evolving challenges tied to AI-generated content and metadata manipulation.

Key topics to be discussed:

• What metadata reveals: Authorship, timelines, geolocation, access history
• Common metadata production pitfalls (e.g., stripped formats, broken chains of custody)
• The impact of generative AI on metadata reliability and detection
• Real-world strategies for attribution in cloud-based or mobile ecosystems

Session III – What Comes After Discovery? How Providers Can Help Meet the Unique Admissibility Challenges AI-Based or Enhanced Evidence – Kenneth Rashbaum

Convincing a harried and impatient judge that electronic information is sufficiently reliable to be admitted into evidence is hard enough, even in 2025. Adding evidence created or enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI) can increase the challenge by an order of magnitude. Most trial lawyers don’t have the technical background to meet evidentiary foundation arguments, and those who do often don’t know how to phrase the arguments in non-jargon terms that a judge, and later, perhaps a jury, can understand. The solution can be found in the proponent’s greatest potential ally, the AI model provider. Providers’ business models center upon making the complex understandable, and with guidance from experienced trial counsel can assist in creating winning arguments for admissibility and, of equal importance, defeating the arguments to preclude such evidence.

Key topics to be discussed:

• Good fences make good neighbors: Drafting the service agreement with the provider so that the provider will provide training, support and assistance in dispute resolution
• A guide of the evidence foundation elements as they impact AI-created or enhanced evidence, in the absence of precedent
• Making or meeting Daubert or Frye challenges to AI evidence
• Constructing arguments for and against admissibility: Creating the narrative that overcomes, or leans into, fears of generative and predictive AI

Session IV – Beyond the Device: Unlocking Smartphone Evidence from Multiple Sources – Laurence D. Lieb

There are at least four distinct locations from which smartphone-based evidence can be recovered including the physical device itself, cloud backups, backups on computers, and social media accounts in the web. This session will cover what types of evidence one can recover from smartphones, the locations from which smartphone evidence can be recovered if the phone itself is no longer accessible, and open-source intelligence methods to identify phone carriers and social media profiles associated with opponents.

Key topics to be discussed:

• Smartphones are basically file cabinets
• Four distinct sources from which smartphone evidence can be recovered
• Leveraging agreed orders and subpoenas to acquire communication evidence
• Moving to the Offensive: Methods to collect evidence about one’s opponent

Closed-captioning available