e-Discovery Team

I have decided to waive all tuition charges to attend my online training program. It is now entirely free. You are not even required to register. Call it a senior moment if you will, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.

This online e-discovery training program started at the University of Florida’s College of Law in 2010. Online e-Discovery Instruction in Law School Is Now a Reality, After two years of teaching the program online for U.F., I modified it somewhat and started a program available to anyone, not just U.F. law students. I called it e-Discovery Team Training. I charged a modest fee to cover overhead, $500, plus another $500 if a student wanted to be tested. Effective today, all tuition fees to attend all classes are waived. Testing has been discontinued. I will instead spend my time keeping the content of the course current.

If you have not been to my course in a while, please click on over and check it out. Suggest you read the default Welcome page and the Curriculum page. You might also want to see the Introduction class. The whole course has an all new look and feel and many revised or new classes.  I tried to make it easy to read, even on your phone.

There are now eighty-five classes, plus homework assignments at the end of each class. It takes at least seventy-five hours to complete the course, but one student who clicked all links and did all homework, spent over 400 hours. This is serious in-depth legal training.

Here are a few excerpts from the e-Discovery Team Training the Welcome Page that you may find interesting.

This course was designed by lawyers for lawyers, paralegals and law students, but is open to everyone. It includes over eleven hours of high-definition videos from some of the top experts in the world. Each of the 85 classes concludes with challenging follow-up assignments that require creativity, research skills and independent thinking. …

Designed to be viewed on computer, tablet or phone: put a law professor in your pocket. …

Why is this Free? What’s the Catch? 

This kind of law school quality e-discovery education, if you could get it, would cost anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000. Our price is now – zero. It’s Free. (We used to charge $500 to cover overhead, but in 2017 switched to this free model.) Some day we may include vendor ads, but in the meantime, this is just an old lawyer’s legacy and payback to the legal profession. He now absorbs all of the costs of running the program.

Why? He does not want his grandchildren to live in a post-truth world. He strongly believes that disputes should be resolved on the merits, not on opinions, money and power. He feels strongly that lawsuits, like elections, should be decided on the “true-facts.” Justice requires truth. Truth in the law today cannot be found without effective, cost-efficient discovery. It requires lawyers and legal teams who are masters of the digital domain.

Most lawyers today only know paper files. They cannot find the digital histories recorded everywhere in electronic systems, facts that they need to represent their clients. They cannot discover what really happened, at least not the full picture. They often miss the key documents they need because the evidence is digital, yet lawyer training is still only in paper. They still think that truth can be uncovered in a stack of papers. They do not realize that it is all digital now, that the few papers they see are mere partial printouts, not originals.

The truth is out there, but is hidden in vast clouds of electronically stored information. Most lawyers are still struggling with technology and ESI. The old lawyer behind this program is trying to reverse this trend. He is trying to help the next legal generations. He is trying to open up a New Age of e-Discovery where all the key facts needed are quickly e-discovered. For this positive vision of the future see the third class in the first section of the course: Section One, Module C.

Who is Behind this Training Program? 

Ralph Losey is the old lawyer behind this program. He is giving away his lifetime of technology and law knowledge to help keep the legal profession relevant in today’s fast changing world. He has also created a TARcourse.com to share what he knows about document review enhanced by artificial intelligence. That is his sub-speciality.

Conclusion

The older you get (I’m now 65), the more you realize the truth of Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement speech:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Know anyone who needs to know more about e-discovery? Send them over. There are no longer any economic barriers of entry.