Like most lawyers (at least that’s what I tell myself), I put off my CLE credits until the bitter end of my reporting period. As I scrambled to find credits, I came across just one CLE course concentrated on legal technology. The course focused on metadata—a word most of the world had never heard until recent events like the government’s PRISM program, the scandal surrounding Hilary Clinton’s email and the fight between Apple and the U.S. Department of Justice to unlock metadata on encrypted phones. As an e-discovery professional, I had to attend this CLE course.
I learned a lot. Among other things, the course taught us why metadata can be a problem, how to scrub metadata, how to integrate metadata manipulation into the workflow, and what to do when there’s an unauthorized metadata disclosure. Much of this information was useful, but I quickly became dismayed by the negative, fear-based message they were sending about technology and data that only encouraged people to avoid it.
