Introduction

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Publication year: 2020

Introduction¹

Eric Shinseki, a retired Army general and former secretary of veterans affairs, once famously said: “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” What this concept means for us litigators is that you can only maintain (and ideally increase) your fitness by keeping up with the ever-changing litigation trends and transforming with the times. There are too many emerging trends that are driving change in the litigation practice today to discuss all of them here. Therefore, we focus in this publication on those trends that have a wide-ranging impact across each litigation-related topic we discuss in the various chapters. For instance, advances in technology are having a profound effect on almost all areas of case strategy and how lawyers manage litigation. So, too, are concerns about the rising costs of litigation, new rules and developments in case law, and the apparent shift in the regulatory environment and societal perspectives since President Donald Trump entered the political arena. In keeping with the notion that experience is the best guide to law, this book presents the thoughts of a diverse group of litigators on how they incorporate these various emerging trends into their practice.

Providing a preview of each chapter, Chapter One focuses on in-house counsel. The author of Litigation Management developed the original content in this chapter after a roundtable discussion with corporate counsel. This book discusses new trends from the in-house counsel’s perspective such as the emergence of new technology to manage litigation costs and the importance of considering diversity and inclusion when promoting counsel internally and selecting outside litigation counsel.

The maxim “know your enemy” applies to Chapter Two. This chapter addresses litigation from the plaintiff’s perspective. In particular, it discusses critical emerging issues for the plaintiffs’ bar, including recent amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and how to use those rules to a plaintiff’s advantage.

Like everything else, litigation is more technology-focused that ever. Nowhere is the effect of technology more apparent than in the prevalence of e-discovery. Business once conducted by telephone is now done by email, creating a record of communications whose collection, analysis, and production is a fundamental aspect of every case. Chapter Three surveys the developing issues in e-discovery.

Multidistrict litigation (MDL) is the topic...