Highlights of the Masters Conference

The Masters Conference was held on Tuesday, May 22, 2018 in the Aon Building housing Microsoft’s Chicago office.

Robert Childress, Founder of the Masters Conference, introduced Dennis Garcia, AGC of Microsoft for the keynote traversing the landscape of legal leveraging the Microsoft stack—and with a heartfelt video of augmented reality assisting a blind Microsoft employee visualize the external environment.  Robert Childress, accompanied by his fiancé, Brittany, was warmly embraced by his eDiscovery family.

Panels included a star studded session with Mark Yacano, Major Lindsay & Africa, Dennis Kennedy, formerly a platform/product attorney at MasterCard and a true Legal Tech pioneer, Patrick Lamb of Valorem and his new disruptive endeavor and Matt Poplawski, eDiscovery attorney with Winston & Strawn.  The panel, moderated by friend of ACEDS, Cash Butler of Clarilegal, broke new ground with the metrics and incentives for cross-silo work with law firms, service providers and corporations, and focused on reducing friction and increasing deal velocity.

The GDPR panel, moderated by Mary Mack, Executive Director of ACEDS, included Jason Priebe of Seyfarth Shaw, Debbie Reynolds of Eimer Stahl Discovery Services, LLC and Charles E. Harris II of Mayer Brown.  The Social Media panel included Helen Gieb of QDiscovery, Colleen Kenney of Sidley Austin LLP, Grant Watson of SmithAmundson and moderator, Brian McClure of QDiscovery.

Our partner, David Kinnear, of High Performance Counsel’s HPC-TV live-streamed several panels and two key interviews.  The first, with Microsoft AGC, Dennis Garcia and second with Major, Lindsay & Africa’s Mark Yacano, gave insight into the deep reach of technology into the legal department.

Our ACEDS Chicago Chapter Happy Hour had 100+ attendees, many of whom came after work. We are so thankful to our sponsors; AccessData, Heretik, Hire Counsel, HayStackID, Navigant, Ricoh, Catalyst, QDiscovery, DiscoverReady and The CJK Group who made the event possible!

The ACEDS Chicago visit included meetings with High Performance Counsel’s hippest of HipCounsel, David Kinnear, CMO of QDiscovery, Tricia Johnson, team Relativity and Heureka’s Nate Latessa.

You can view all livestreams below:

Mary Mack’s panel: Data Privacy in a New World of the EU/US Privacy Shield and the GDPR: Livestream courtesy of ACEDS Media Partner: High Performance Counsel (HPC) Media Group: https://twitter.com/HipCounsel/status/999017059219582976

Panel with Helen Geib of QDiscovery, Charles Krugel, Colleen Kenney and Grant Watson- moderated by Brian McClure of QDiscovery: https://twitter.com/kayleewalstad/status/999017166426001408

Keynote – Dennis Garcia, AGC of Microsoft: https://twitter.com/kayleewalstad/status/998982926028214277

Livestream from the Masters Conference panel: Social Media, Multimedia and Other Things You May Have Overlooked – Four TedTalks: https://twitter.com/kayleewalstad/status/998961935352848384

Livestream from the Masters: Legal Technology Innovation – How the Legal Buyer is Changing – with Mark Yacano of Major, Lindsey & Africa, Cash Butler of Clarilegal, Patrick Lamb of Valorem Law Group and Matthew Poplawski of Winston & Strawn: https://twitter.com/kayleewalstad/status/998943702235131904

Livestream from the ACEDS Chicago Chapter Happy Hour: https://twitter.com/kayleewalstad/status/999472293347766272

Livestream from Mary Mack interview with Dennis Garcia, AGC Microsoft- Livestream courtesy of ACEDS Media Partner High Performance Counsel (HPC) Media Group: https://twitter.com/HipCounsel/status/998999260728299520

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