The Masters Conference: focus on John Tredennick, Catalyst and teaching e-discovery in law schools

John Tredennick is the founder and CEO of Catalyst Repository Systems, which provides secure, web-based software to help corporations and their counsel manage electronic discovery and work together on complex legal and regulatory matters. Founded in 2000, the company has grown to over 100 people located in major cities across the U.S. and abroad.

Catalyst provides one of the leading multi-language document review systems, Catalyst CR (click here). It has gained significant market share in the past few years and is often requested by corporations and law firms due to its many options, easy scalability and multi-language capabilities. Catalyst was the first software in our “live” software certification program which we launched in D.C.  (click here).  Catalyst and The Posse List will be rolling out this live certification program in several cities, along with a parallel certification webinars for those that cannot attend the live certification programs. 

We caught up with John at Masters Conference:

TPL:     John, you are widely recognized as a legal technology pioneer.  You have  played a large role on the education side of this industry, something we wanted to focus on today.

JT:        Thank you for that. I am a frustrated teacher I guess.

TPL:     And some honors, as we recall.

JT:        A few perhaps. But they are merely a reflection of the great team I get to work with. The first thing you learn is business is that you are not a “solo” practitioner.

TPL:     Ok, enough said.  What did you do before you founded Catalyst?

JT:        I was a trial lawyer and litigation partner with Holland & Hart in Denver. It is the largest and best law firm in the Rocky Mountains in my humble opinion and I spent many great years there.

TPL:     You’ve actually taken this one-step further, bringing e-discovery to the law schools.

JT:        Well, not me. But a lot of other good people have taken the lead on this like the Sedona Conference, and visionary Magistrate Judges like John Facciola and Paul Grimm.  Lawyers don’t learn much—if anything—about electronic discovery in law school. The focus hasn’t changed from when I went to law school 30 years ago.  Professors focus on the “legal” issues and leave the practical topics to the students to learn on their own. I understand their thinking, but there is no reason that a great law school can’t cover both sides of the equation.

My friends Ralph Losey and Bill Hamilton have been teaching a great course at the University of Florida for years. I understand Georgetown Law School also has a great program as does the University of Richmond. They have a great journal as well. I don’t follow law school education that closely but I am sure there are a few, but only a few, others offering similar programs.

That needs to change. Electronic discovery has become one of the largest litigation expenses for law firms and companies.  Lawyers and litigation support professionals need to be prepared to handle the wide-rangy and often tricky issues associated with electronic discovery and that education should start as early as possible.  

I was excited to learn that the Sedona Conference has launched a student outreach program. The place to start teaching the art of electronic discovery is in the classroom.

TPL:     And you have done this by going back to your alma mater, the University of Virginia.  But your program is much more intense, much more comprehensive, yes?

JT:        I don’t know about that, but it is a lot of fun. The course is a “short course” and runs for two weeks. The students get an hour of credit and will have to earn every bit of it. Along with daily classes, they will have to form teams and work a TREC (Text REtrieval Conference) problem based on the Enron documents. Then they can choose between an exam or a paper.

The course explores how the current information explosion is transforming the civil litigation and regulatory process both in the United States and around the world. We examine developing case law and standards on electronic discovery and address the practical problems and issues which arise in the preservation, collection, searching, processing and production of electronic data. The course also provides an introduction to technologies, tools, and software currently used. 

We are covering such topics as data preservation and disclosure obligations under the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the data destruction safe harbor provisions, the preservation of attorney-client privilege, etc., etc.  [Note to readers:  you can find details of the entire program by clicking here]

And I try to make it fun.  Judge Facciola has come and shared his perspective on the kinds of issues he faces every day. We had two leading forensic experts, Sharon Nelson and John Simek talk about data collection and destruction. We have two leading trial lawyers, John Rosenthal and Chris Ohly, coming to talk about electronic discovery in multi-national cases.  We follow that with Amir Milo or Equivio and Professor Michael Berry of the University of Tennessee. Both will talk about and show powerful analytical tools used to organize large document collections.

We close with a presentation by Richard Kershaw of LECG. He flies in from Hong Kong to speak about data privacy and collection issues in Asia and the EU.  All in all, it was a lot of work to get organized but it has been a lot of fun and I have learned as much as the students from these great people. And for two weeks they even call me professor.

TPL:     John, thanks for your time. We regret it was so short.  I hope we can follow-up with you in the near future.

JT:        My pleasure.  Thank you for all you do to organize and support a vital part of our business—the independent reviewers.