Scheindlin to step down from U.S. District bench.

• Position: E-DISCOVERY - Shira Scheindlin

The author of the landmark Zubulake decision is retiring her gavel. U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin, for the Southern District of New York, who has presided over many high-profile cases and made groundbreaking e-discovery decisions, plans to leave the bench for private practice in New York City, The New York Law Journal has reported.

Scheindlin told her colleagues in a written letter that she also plans to spend time mentoring, lecturing, and working on alternative dispute resolution, including work as "an arbitrator and mediator and in other neutral capacities with the hope of doing a fair amount of public interest work, as well as working on commercial matters."

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Scheindlin, 69, was appointed to the Southern District of New York by President Bill Clinton in 1994. Over the years, she made a name for herself as an expert on e-discovery in a series of opinions in Zubulake v. UBS Warburg starting in 2003.

Of course, that decision changed the way companies and lawyers approach electronically stored information. Zubulake put companies on notice that they have a duty to preserve data once they reasonably anticipate they might be sued...