Where's Our Flying Car? Charting a Path to Secure, Seamless Enterprise Discovery

Ethan Ackerman counsels clients in complex litigation, particularly as it relates to electronic discovery (eDiscovery). Working with clients and also with other counsel, Ethan tailors plans for effectively handling, and minimizing, electronic discovery in civil litigation, arbitration or administrative proceedings. He advises on all phases of trial practice, including prelitigation counseling regarding legal hold and document preservation, information management and records retention policies, protective orders and relief, discovery response planning, technology-assisted review defensibility, and cost recovery.

Sharika de Freitas is a legal technology executive with over 18 years' experience spanning both law firms and in-house work. Currently, she serves as the head of Paramount Global's Information Governance and eDiscovery group and her focus remains on managing and advancing technology to best support legal needs.

Jay Brudz is a partner in Drinker Biddle’s Commercial Litigation Practice Group and a member of the Data Management and Discovery team. He is also Executive Managing Director of the firm’s technology subsidiary Tritura IG LLC, which provides state-of-the-art technology services. Jay’s experience includes building and managing world class e-discovery operations, internal compliance, and FCPA investigations, and developing enterprise-level information governance best practices.

Jay previously served in several roles that focused on the intersection of applied technology and law, including as Senior Counsel for Legal Technology at General Electric, where he created and led their corporate e-discovery center supporting over 1,200 attorneys. In this role, he was also responsible for all corporate technology initiatives within GE’s legal operation, including the successful implementation of legal hold, e-billing, insider trading compliance, intranet, and patent docketing systems. Jay also previously served as President and Senior Forensic Consultant of Verabit, where he conducted computer forensic investigations and provided expert consultation and testimony in cases ranging from employee misappropriation of trade secrets to FCPA investigations. Prior to that, he was a system architect and lead developer for a database backed Web-based development company specializing in creating customized systems for corporate legal operations. Jay is an accomplished Java, PHP, VisualBasic, and PL-SQL programmer, and he has experience with many other technologies.

Jay has also served as Litigation and Transactions counsel for GE Industrial Systems, where he managed a diverse portfolio of cases and M&A transactions for a $4.5 billion division of General Electric.

Bennett B. Borden is a partner in the firm's Commercial Litigation Practice Group and Co-chair of the Information Governance and eDiscovery Group. He is also an executive managing director of the firm's ediscovery subsidiary, Tritura Information Governance LLC, which provides state of the art ediscovery technology and services to the firm's clients.

Bennett is a globally recognized authority on the legal, technology and policy implications of digital information. Bennett has focused his career on helping clients use the power of information governance to drive strategic litigation outcomes, reduce eDiscovery costs, and improve business operations.

Bennett is Chair of the Cloud Computing Committee and Vice Chair of the eDiscovery and Digital Evidence Committee of the Science and Technology Law Section of the ABA. He is also a founding member of the steering committee for the Electronic Discovery Section of the District of Columbia Bar, an Information Governance drafting group member of The Sedona Conference, an Advisory Committee Member for the Georgetown Paralegal Studies Program and a Board Member for the D.C. Chapter of ARMA. He is a frequent speaker and author and a guest lecturer at Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Virginia Law School, Temple University Law School, and the University of Maryland College of Information Studies.

In addition to conducting both offensive and defensive electronic discovery in complex litigation, Bennett has extensive experience counseling clients on the establishment of information governance and records management policies. He regularly advises multinational clients regarding data privacy, security, and regulatory compliance.