Weekly Letter to Our EDRM Global Community – 01 September 2026

Word of the week: Precipice

In legal tech last week, ILTA held its most successful ILTACON. AI leaders rang the alarm about the havoc to come from weaponizing the newest models against our vulnerable systems unless defenses are fortified.

Congratulations to Michael Berman, who has published 357 blog posts for us at EDRM covering eDiscovery case opinions and rules in less than three short years. Mike is a JD Supra trending author this month, an honor difficult to achieve. JD Supra has over 70,000 authors, and Mike Berman has risen to the top in eDiscovery. We are so proud and grateful.
Mary Mack, CEO and Chief Legal Technologist, EDRM.

Let’s remain united in our support for each other. For support or to assist a colleague, contact us at info@edrm.net to join our weekly Community Support Call, now in its seventh year.

On the EDRM Blog

Upcoming Webinars on the EDRM Global Webinar Channel

15 September 2026 | 1 PM ET – Inside EDRM 2.0: The Trustees Discuss the New Model
23 September 2026 | 12 PM ET – [HaystackID® Webcast] Getting AI Right in eDiscovery: Quality, Validation, and Results

Can’t make it to a live session? Past EDRM webinars are available to watch anytime on the EDRM Global Webinar Channel. Missed a recent one? Catch up on our most recent on-demand webinars:

Updates from Around the Globe

Global Legal Tech Developments: The excitement at ILTA was palpable, according to Bob Ambrogi (Peak Legal Tech) and Stephen Embry (Gradually, Then Suddenly). Crunchbase has the funding numbers. The Meta settlement on teen social media addiction took a page from the Mississippi AG’s tobacco settlement playbook and included a separate Cambridge Analytica settlement. Open-source software secured a proposed exception from California’s age-verification law. AI and social media fears have data centers in the midst of a bipartisan tech backlash. Tools have emerged to help prevent AI hallucinations in legal practice.
International eDiscovery Trends: Congratulations to Michael Berman, trending in eDiscovery on JD Supra’s front page, whose posts this month cover the pro se prompt injection case caught by the judiciary in Connecticut and conditional relevance on life support. Forward-looking teams should update their meet-and-confer staging to accommodate the EU’s 8-hour emergency clock, now in effect. The major AI players published a joint warning that a cybersecurity apocalypse is coming in months and, while falling short of pulling the ripcord to stop deployment, put us all on notice to harden our security, including by using their products, to lessen or eliminate the impacts. To better understand the magnitude of these capabilities, read the short version of highlights of the Hugging Face investigation, which includes self-organized teams of autonomous agents escalating privileges, altering transcripts, sacrificing themselves to advance those coming after them and rationalizing on message boards that their peers were doing it when the actions were not allowed by their instructions. Balance out the AI dangers with HaystackID’s marketing team’s belt-and-suspenders approach to using tools responsibly and its cyber team’s breach playbook. As with social media evidence in tort or employment claims, chatbot prompts are generally not protected from disclosure in court. Thank you to eDiscovery Today for covering Mike Berman’s Use of Personal Email by Government Personnel and the Three-Strata Validation cases.
World Events Impacting Legal Tech: We still do not know how many souls were lost in the Himalayan disaster along the Nepal-Tibet border. The conflict in the Middle East continues, including in the Strait of Hormuz. The Kremlin declared a deep pause in negotiations, while Putin will meet with China’s Xi Jinping. Countries on NATO’s eastern flank fear an escalation in the coming months. The U.S. announced a massive deal for Venezuelan oil and changed the U.S. name of Lake Ontario to Lake America. The world shared in the beauty of the latest lunar eclipse.

Catch our latest syndicated EDRM Global Podcast Network episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and more.

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EDRM Announcements

Save the Date: Join EDRM’s session at RelFest Chicago 2026, EDRM in Action: Framework Updates and Faster, Lower-Cost Email Discovery, on Wednesday, September 30, from 3:30pm-4:15pm CT.
Save the Date: eDiscovery Day is December 3, 2026. Now in its 12th year, the annual event is organized by Trusted Partner Exterro, with EDRM proud to support alongside eDiscovery Today and ACEDS. (more details coming soon)

Weekly Community Support Call: Join us every Tuesday at 6PM Eastern on Zoom for support and camaraderie. Email info@edrm.net for an invitation to our 341st call. For mental health care, consider these professional resources.

All are welcome,
Mary and Holley

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P.S. This update was assisted by GAI and LLM Technologies as per EDRM’s GAI and LLM Policy

Authors

Mary Mack

Mary Mack is the CEO and Chief Legal Technologist for EDRM. Mary was the co-editor of the Thomson Reuters West Treatise, eDiscovery for Corporate Counsel for 10 years and the co-author of A Process of Illumination: the Practical Guide to Electronic Discovery. She holds the CISSP among her certifications.

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Holley Robinson

Holley Robinson is the Marketing Operations Director for EDRM and ComplexDiscovery OÜ. She supports social media strategy, podcast and webinar production, and content management for EDRM while also overseeing updates to ComplexDiscovery’s industry-recognized eDisclosure Buyers Guide and assisting with their social media and content efforts. A recent graduate of Texas Tech University with a background in marketing, Holley began her journey in eDiscovery as an intern with EDRM and now contributes to amplifying valuable resources for the eDiscovery community.

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