Digital evidence and its use in Ireland’s courts system is the focus of a conference taking place next month. E-Discovery Ireland is slated for Friday, 26 October, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin.
Aimed at technologists and legal professionals, it follows last year’s inaugural conference which marked the growth of electronic evidence to a point where most legal cases in Ireland now involve it, and the material it can reveal often plays a key role in deciding the outcome.
The event is organised by Cernam, the Dublin-based technology firm which specialises in gathering digital evidence from online sources such as web pages, blogs, Facebook posts or cloud services. The 2012 conference is being co-presented with Informa, an Irish information management company.
Cernam managing director Owen O’Connor said the recent high-profile lawsuit involving Apple and Samsung showed how complex this area has become.
“This was a case which pitted the most valuable public company in history against the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, yet both sides made critical mistakes in handling digital evidence,” O’Connor said. “This may mark a turning point, where we realise this area has become so complex that the only certainty is failure, and that we therefore need a new approach to dealing with electronic records in litigation.”
This continues a theme from last year’s conference, where several of the speakers pointed up the risk of going in to legal proceedings badly prepared – increasing the chances of an unsuccessful outcome.
A full agenda and speaker list is to be unveiled shortly at www.ediscovery.ie, and it’s likely to include a combination of leading figures in the domestic arena alongside international e-discovery experts.
