Bill Butterfield died on Tuesday, December 13 after a brief, silent battle with cancer. He was a good man and an exemplary attorney. Knowing that I will never meet him again, I mourn that I cannot know him better. I know well Bill’s tireless efforts to protect every litigant’s right to obtain full and fair discovery. His was a revered and respected voice at The Sedona Conference, where he stood against multitudes who would cripple our right to seek the truth that lives in electronically-stored information. Bill employed canny strategies that the naysayers couldn’t match: He was sensible, practical, courteous and kind. Bill listened. He considered, and he contributed. Bill was a worthy opponent to many, an enemy to none.
Exactly five years to the day before he died, Bill testified before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee concerning electronic discovery. I watched Bill’s testimony and saw the poise and candor that distinguish a good advocate from a great one. I was invested in Bill’s success as he’d done me the honor of seeking my thoughts about his testimony the weekend prior. We had a nice chat, and I shared a memo with talking points afterward that he encouraged me to publish. I was pleased to see Bill touch on those points in his Congressional testimony, but I don’t imagine they were mine alone. Bill knew e-discovery as well as anyone, and I expect he sought advice from many who till this field. He was wise that way.
I am flattered as well that Bill sought to engage me in his cases on several occasions. For one reason or another, I had to decline each time; so, now I rue having missed the opportunity to work with Bill as his counsel. That would have been nice. I expect I would have learned a lot, for Bill, a former Eagle Scout, set a fine example for us all.
I send my earnest sympathies to Bill’s wife, Susan, his family, partners at Hausfield and many friends. Though I know he will be remembered in many lasting ways, like a scholarship or other commemoration, Bill’s legacy is the balance he brought to the last decade of e-discovery standard setting and rule making efforts. At a time when we really needed someone like Bill Butterfield to step in front of the tanks, we were fortunate indeed that Bill stepped in and stepped up.
“Will the person who left their cell phone at the security checkpoint please retrieve it?” People constantly leave their phones behind at security checkpoints, washrooms, checkout counters and charge stations. Too, the little buggers slip out of pockets and purses. More than three million phones are lost in the U.S. every year, and less than one-in-ten lost phones finds its way home. Saturday night, I found an iPhone on the floor at a big party in the Faubourg Marigny in New Orleans. I located the owner by asking everyone in sight if they’d lost a phone, and when I found her, the owner didn’t know she’d dropped it.
As I stow the turkey platter and box up the pilgrim décor, I’m reminded that it’s time once more to celebrate E-Discovery Day, TODAY, Thursday, December 1. No doubt, you’re saying, “So SOON?!?! I still haven’t retrieved those E-Discovery Day 2015 balloons that got loose in the atrium, and who’s going to eat all that E-Discovery Day Kringle taking up space in the office freezer?” (Special-ordered from Racine in the traditional e-discovery flavor, Cinnamon, TIFF and Tears™).
In the wee hours last evening, I received a question posed by Angela Bunting with Nuix down in Sydney, Australia. Angela has such deep knowledge of e-discovery above and below the Equator that I was flattered to be queried by someone I’d go to for guidance. It was a magnificent hypothetical question.
Each September for the last four years, I’ve had the pleasure to participate in a splendid e-discovery conference in Portland, Oregon called PREX, so-called because the whole event is devoted to PReservation EXcellence. It’s sponsored by Zapproved, but unlike other developer events, it’s less a celebration of self than a product-neutral effort to promote better practices in mounting a defensible enterprise legal hold. A bevy of prominent judges and thought leaders turn out to speak; but, the real star of PREX is Portland itself, resplendent in those precious, late-Summer weeks when one can count on abundant sunshine. If you’re looking for fine, fun education in excellent company, pencil PREX in for 
In my law practice, I use PowerPoint more frequently than Word. Word processing tools are for preparing documents for people to read and understand; I use presentation tools like PowerPoint when I want people to see and understand. PowerPoint isn’t a word processor; it’s a visual presentation tool. You can fill slides with text as you might a word-processed document, but when you do that, you’re killing the power of PowerPoint.
I’ve just returned from a quick trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico. I travelled there to deliver a three-hour presentation on e-discovery as part of a day of education commemorating the 50th anniversary of Article III federal courts on the island. It’s a trip that’s been in the works for some time, and an event about which I was more than usually anxious and discreet. Part of my anxiety stemmed from three hours being a LOOOONG time for an audience to listen to one voice, especially when the topic is somewhat esoteric and technical. My time slot was the three hour block smack in the middle of the day. Too, there were more than 500 people in attendance, and I wanted it to be the performance of a lifetime.
Ball in your Court 