ESI: From Intake through Trial
Date: Oct 15, 2026 12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Online
Member Price: $143.00
Non-Member Price: $179.00
Section Price: $0.00
Areas of Law: Civil
Earn up to 2.4 credits! (More Information)
Featured Speaker
Moderator
- Brian M. Chase, Esq.
- Managing Director, Digital Forensics & EDiscovery, ArcherHall, Tucson, Arizona
Presenters
ESI from Intake through Trial: Proven Strategies for Real Results
As a New Jersey attorney, you're confronted with electronically stored information (ESI) at every stage - from the first client intake meeting, when the duty to preserve may already have attached, through the moment you move a text message or database export into evidence at trial. But that's easier said than done. The data keeps changing faster than the guidance: artificial intelligence-generated content, all kinds of messaging, collaboration platforms that version a document a hundred times a day, and devices syncing across jurisdictions have all outpaced assumptions that felt settled a decade ago.
This two-hour program will provide you with the proven, time-tested strategies you need to handle the full litigation life cycle in order - intake and the litigation hold, collection and custodian interviews, the ESI protocol and requests, proportionality and motion practice, authentication, and admission at trial. Discovery expert Brian M. Chase will draw on years of digital forensics and eDiscovery work to demonstrate what holds up when the technology is new, but the rules aren't - the approaches that will produce usable data, survive challenge, and deliver real results for your clients.
Handle ESI with confidence at every stage of the case:
- Spot the preservation trigger at intake and issue a litigation hold that survives later scrutiny
- Run a custodian interview that finds where the data actually lives, including AI tools, chat platforms, and personal devices
- Draft ESI requests and subpoenas under Rules 26, 34, and 45 that produce usable native data instead of PDF dumps
- Negotiate an ESI protocol covering scope, custodians, search terms, formats, and cost allocation before it becomes a fight
- Build and defeat proportionality arguments, and preserve the record for spoliation motions under Rule 37(e)
- Authenticate electronic evidence under Rules 901(b)(9) and 902(13)-(14) and beat hearsay, best evidence, and completeness objections at trial
- … and more!
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