The best-kept s
ecret in e-discovery was revealed this week when DLA Piper announced that the Honorable Andrew Peck joined the firm.
Judge Peck has served as a federal magistrate judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York since he took the bench in 1995, including a term as chief magistrate judge from 2004 to 2005. He currently serves as co-chair of the SDNY-EDNY Local Rules Committee. Prior to taking the bench, Judge Peck was a litigator at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, focusing on intellectual property matters.
Most e-discovery practitioners associate Judge Peck with groundbreaking TAR (Technology Assisted Review) or predictive coding opinions. Yet, it was one of his first cases that ushered in the e-discovery era. Ian Lopez of ALM reports that one of Judge Peck’s first cases ushered in the e-discovery era. “That opinion was in 1995’s Anti-Monopoly v. Hasbro, in which Peck wrote ‘it is black letter law that computerized data is discoverable if relevant.’ This opinion, said Kenneth Withers, deputy executive director at The Sedona Conference, marks Peck as ‘the first judge to actually identify e-discovery as a unique phenomenon.’”
Judge Peck received his J.D. from Duke University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Duke Law Journal, and his B.A. from Cornell University. Duke University School of Law is now the home of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) and the host of the conference that sparked the 2015 changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP).
ACEDS and I personally wish the Honorable Andrew Peck every success in his new venture.
Coverage of Judge Peck’s retirement celebration and move to DLA Piper:
