Cite Early! Cite Often! The 2019-2020 Cases That Every Practitioner Should Know

The Honorable Willie J. Epps, Jr. is a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Western District of Missouri. Judge Epps was born in Mississippi and raised in Missouri. He is a graduate of St. Louis Country Day School, Amherst College, and Harvard Law School. He began his legal career in service to our country as a U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, and Assistant Special Counsel for The Waco Investigation. Later, he was named chief compliance officer for a Fortune 500 company, partner at two law firms, and head of litigation for a financial services company.

Judge Epps is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He serves on the Executive Committee of the National Conference of Federal Trial Judges. He teaches annually at Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop. Prior to being appointed a federal judge, Judge Epps was listed in The Best Lawyers in America and
Missouri & Kansas Super Lawyers.

Justice Timothy S. Driscoll is a Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, and has been assigned to the Nassau County Commercial Division since May 2009. From January 2008 through April 2009, Judge Driscoll sat in the Nassau County Matrimonial Center. Judge Driscoll is also an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and has served as a teaching team member at the Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop.

Prior to beginning his judicial service on January 1, 2008, Judge Driscoll held a number of posts in the public and private sector. He served as Deputy Nassau County Executive for Law Enforcement and Public Safety from July 2004 to December 2007. In that position, he oversaw all of the public safety and law enforcement agencies in the County, including the Police, Fire Marshal, Probation, Sheriff, Office of Consumer Affairs, Traffic and Parking Violations Agency, Medical Examiner, and Office of Emergency Management.

Judge Driscoll was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York from November 2000 to July 2004. His case load included violent crime matters including racketeering, murder, gun possession and trafficking, and narcotics distribution, as well as white collar matters including mail fraud, wire fraud and health care fraud. His work as a federal prosecutor was recognized by the FBI, Nassau County Police Department, Old Brookville Police Department, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Patrick Oot is a Chambers-ranked global practice leader in e-discovery and government investigations. Patrick is recognized in Who’s Who Legal for his expertise in electronic discovery and data privacy. He is one of the few e-discovery and compliance attorneys in the nation that possesses the tripartite experience of an in-house corporate counsel from a Fortune 16 organization; a senior attorney at a federal regulatory agency; and a partner in a global firm.

Patrick works towards merits-based case strategy to avoid litigation issues that arise from electronic discovery. He has negotiated favorable scope and terms in both government investigations and civil litigation for his clients. He has both prepared 30(b)(6) deponents for electronic discovery issues and testified regarding highly technical issues on behalf of organizational clients in federal litigation. Patrick has also directed counter-discovery strategy against legal adversaries using computer forensics and digital investigations techniques. He has successfully defended against “discovery-on-discovery” in motion practice.

Before joining Shook, Hardy & Bacon, Patrick served as Senior Special Counsel for Electronic Discovery in the Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). During his tenure at SEC, Patrick co-chaired the agency’s cross-divisional Electronic Discovery Action Team and co-authored The SEC Electronic Discovery and Litigation Response Manual. He counseled SEC senior leadership and agency staff on best practices and guidance for discovery and litigation strategy and privilege protections and on strategically significant matters involving forensics, technology and Electronic Communications Privacy Act interpretation for subpoena enforcement. Patrick appeared twice as SEC’s 30(b)(6) deponent to defend the agency’s discovery practices with favorable outcomes to the agency. He successfully designed and implemented SEC’s preservation process as well as a federal government-wide educational program that includes participation of the federal judiciary.

Prior to serving at SEC, Patrick was an experienced in-house counsel leading Verizon’s electronic discovery practice as Director of Electronic Discovery and Senior Litigation Counsel. Patrick was one of the nation’s first in-house attorneys charged to create and deploy defensible policies, guidelines and procedures for litigation response. While at Verizon, Patrick testified as the company’s Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6) witness, defending the same policies and guidelines that he helped design and implement. In 2006, he was nominated for the Verizon Excellence Award after playing a key role in the successful completion of Verizon’s response to the Department of Justice’s Second Request for Documents in its acquisition of MCI. As a result of his work, Inside Counsel magazine named Verizon’s e-discovery team as one of the ten most innovative legal groups of 2007, the group’s second year winning the title. In 2007, Patrick appeared with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer at Georgetown University Law Center’s H5 Summit on Electronic Discovery. He has testified before the U.S. Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Evidence where he presented his position on Proposed Rule of Evidence 502. The committee included language incorporating his suggestions in its draft to the Judicial Conference.

Outside of work, Patrick volunteers his time as a co-founder of The Electronic Discovery Institute, a non-profit organization that conducts studies of litigation processes and produced education programs for the benefit of the federal and state judiciary. Patrick lectures regularly at educational events and legal conferences internationally. He has appeared on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and was interviewed for the August 2008 edition of The Economist.

Julianna Michelle Childs is a federal judge on the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina. She joined the court in 2010 after a nomination from President Barack Obama.

Childs was nominated by President Barack Obama on December 22, 2009, to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina vacated by George Anderson. The American Bar Association rated Anderson Unanimously Well Qualified for the nomination. Hearings on Childs' nomination were held before the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 16, 2010, and her nomination was reported by U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on May 6, 2010. Childs was confirmed on a voice vote of the U.S. Senate on August 5, 2010, and she received her commission on August 20, 2010.

Childs earned her bachelor's degree from the University of South Florida in 1988, her master's degree from the University of South Carolina School of Business in 1991, and her J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law with her J.D. in 1991.

The Honorable Andrew J. Peck served for 23 years as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of New York, including a term as Chief Magistrate Judge from 2004 to 2005. Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Peck was in private practice for 17 years, focusing on commercial and entertainment litigation, including copyright and trademark matters, with extensive trial experience.

At DLA Piper, Judge Peck advises on innovative and efficient solutions to the challenges of information management, both within and outside the litigation context. He frequently speaks at conferences concerning eDiscovery issues. Since joining DLA Piper, Judge Peck has been retained to serve as special discovery counsel to clients and law firms, and to submit expert reports in state court cases. Judge Peck is ranked by Chambers as "Recognized Practitioner" for "Litigation: E-Discovery in USA- Nationwide."

Judge Peck also is available to serve as an arbitrator, mediator and Special Master. In addition to serving directly through DLA Piper, Judge Peck is on the arbitration and mediation rosters of the American Arbitration Association (AAA), Federal Arbitration, Inc., and National Arbitration and Mediation (NAM).

Judge Peck is recognized internationally for bringing electronic discovery competency to the attention of both the judiciary and bar. Indeed, he is widely described as the first judge to tackle the subject of e-discovery head on, most notably in the influential 1995 decision Anti-Monopoly v. Hasbro, in which Judge Peck found that "it is black letter law that computerized data is discoverable if relevant." Also among his legacy rulings is the 2012 employment class action Monique Da Silva Moore, et. al. v. Publicis Groupe & MSL Group, the first judicial decision approving the use of technology-assisted review. By 2015, Judge Peck declared in Rio Tinto v. Valle that it was black-letter law that if the responding party wished to use TAR, courts would allow it. In March 2018, the New York Law Journal called Judge Peck "one of e-discovery's most influential figures."

Among the honors he has received, American Lawyer named him to its list of the Top 50 Innovators of the Last 50 Years as its Judicial E-Discovery Innovator.