The ESI of Today and the ESI of Tomorrow

Judge Conti is the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. She has authored articles on e-discovery and is a frequent lecturer at seminars on e-discovery. She is on the editorial review team for the 2017 edition of Judicial Resources to be published by The Sedona Conference, which will address a variety of e-discovery and technology issues. Judge Conti currently is a judicial advisor and a member of the steering committee for the Sedona Conference’s Working Group 10 on Patent Litigation Best Practices. Judge Conti was a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and is a former Chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on the Administration of the Bankruptcy System. She received the American Inns of Court 2009 Professionalism Award for the Third Circuit and the 2016 W. Edward Sell Business Lawyer Award from the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Business Law Section.

Prior to her appointment, she was a shareholder with the Pittsburgh office of Buchanan Ingersoll, Professional Corporation, now Buchanan Ingersoll Rooney (“Buchanan”), and prior to joining Buchanan she was a partner with Kirkpatrick, Lockhart, Johnson & Hutchison, now known as K&L Gates LLP. Judge Conti was a Professor of Law at Duquesne University and taught courses on civil procedure, corporations, corporate finance, corporate reorganizations and bankruptcy.

United States Magistrate Judge William Matthewman was appointed to the federal bench in 2012. He sits in the West Palm Beach division of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. As a United States Magistrate Judge, he handles both civil and criminal cases. He has presided over trials, evidentiary hearings, discovery hearings, extradition matters, suppression hearings, initial appearance, bond and detention hearings, as well as settlement conferences and numerous other matters. He routinely encounters e-discovery issues and has issued numerous orders and opinions relating to electronic discovery matters. He has also instructed or presented on various issues, including e-discovery, at the University of Florida School of Law, the Sedona Conference, the University of Miami Law School and before other groups, bar associations and at seminars.

Before his judicial appointment, Judge Matthewman was a very active trial attorney who handled both criminal and civil cases. He is AV rated by Martindale Hubbell and has been a member of The Florida Bar and a trial lawyer since 1983. He was a Florida Bar Board Certified criminal trial attorney. As a trial attorney, he handled numerous federal capital cases in various jurisdictions and tried many high profile, lengthy state and federal cases, some of which trials were covered on television programs such as Dateline, 48 Hours and live on In-Session television. He graduated from the University of Florida School of Law with Honors and was Research Editor on the University of Florida Law Review. He began his career with Holland & Knight in Miami, Florida in 1983 and was also an associate and partner in litigation firms and a sole practitioner.

Before becoming an attorney, he was a police officer in Miami, Florida. He was born in Coral Gables, Florida, has been married over 30 years and has four children.

President George W. Bush appointed Judge Rodriguez to the bench as a United States District Judge for the Western District of Texas in 2003. He is a former Texas Supreme Court Justice and was also a partner in the international law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski, L.L.P.

Judge Rodriguez is a frequent speaker on continuing legal education seminars and has authored numerous articles regarding employment law, discovery, and arbitration issues. He serves as an adjunct professor of law at the St. Mary’s University School of Law. He was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Texas Bar Foundation. He was awarded the Rosewood Gavel Award for outstanding judicial service from the St. Mary’s University School of Law in 2011.

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.