November 25, 2008     03:00pm - 04:00pm Eastern

In September, Congress passed, and the President signed, Senate Bill 2450, which enacted new Federal Rule of Evidence 502. This is the first change in the federal rules dealing with evidential privileges since they were first enacted more than 30 years ago. It represents a significant assertion of federal court authority in what has been traditionally an area for state courts and legislatures. But these strong protections for attorney-client privilege were necessitated by the tremendous growth in the volume and complexity of document and electronic discovery, which made conventional privilege review unduly expensive and fraught with dangers of inadvertent disclosure, leading to forfeiture of privilege. At the same time, uncertainty about the consequences of inadvertent disclosure, particularly in multi-jurisdictional cases, prevented litigants from making agreements or utilizing technologies that could reduce the cost of privilege review.

The enactment of Fed. R. Evid. 502 occurs two years after the adoption of Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(5), which allows litigants to enter into agreements between themselves regarding the consequences of inadvertent disclosure of privileged information, and in the wake of two significant opinions out of the District of Maryland, Hopson v. City of Baltimore and Victor Stanley v. CreativePipe, illustrating the dangers of privilege waiver and pointing out some of the practical problems litigants face in the very real world of discovery.

The Sedona ConferenceŽ Voices from the Desert webinar series is privileged (no pun intended) to bring together the two most influential figures in this rapidly-developing area of the law: Prof. Daniel J. Capra of Fordham University School of Law, reporter to the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Evidence and principle drafter of Rule 502; and Hon. Paul W. Grimm, Chief Magistrate Judge of the District of Maryland, author of both the Hopson and Victor Stanley opinions. Joining the discussion will be Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carl J. West with questions and observations on how Rule 502 may affect state court litigation. This will be a unique opportunity for you to hear expert discussion on this new rule and its effect on state and federal litigation from the most authoritative sources, and to ask your own questions.

Pricing:

$79 Working Group Members of The Sedona Conference^®

$99 General Public

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