It turns out that Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous pronouncement that “hell is other people” was overly broad. Other people per se are not the problem, but rather other lawyers — and uncooperative ones at that. A federal judge in the late 1980s confirmed as much, as a recent e-discovery opinion reminds us: “If there is a hell to which disputatious, uncivil, vituperative lawyers go, let it be one in which the damned are eternally locked in discovery disputes with other lawyers of equally repugnant attributes.”[FOOTNOTE 1]
If hell is the last stop for attorneys who are “eternally locked in discovery disputes,” then The Sedona Conference — a nonprofit research and educational institute — wants to be the guardian angel that keeps counsel cooperative and away from that realm. Working Group 1 of The Sedona Conference consists of judges, attorneys and other experts who meet, discuss and publish on issues relating to electronic discovery. Federal judges are now referring with increasing regularity to the e-discovery guidelines set forth in various publications of The Sedona Conference, including the recently issued The Sedona Conference Cooperation Proclamation. See The Sedona Conference, The Sedona Conference Cooperation Proclamation (July 2008).
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