Weekly Letter to Our EDRM Global Community

Word of the week: Broadening

In legal tech last week, as we digested the impact of the first discovered prompt-injection attacks on legal platforms, China displayed its robotic prowess. Critical infrastructure running on programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in the West was hit by cyberattacks allegedly attributed to warring nation states. In contrast, missiles and drones hit defense manufacturers, supply chains, and markets. Section 230 no longer confers automatic blanket immunity from suits; it is a defense to liability; judicial immunity includes AI use, and attorney prompts were deemed work product. ILTA hallway conversation should be lively.

EDRM 2.0’s full project team put the finishing touches on the new model, emphasizing the foundational information governance requirements underlying eDiscovery, the ubiquity and connective nature of analysis, the ability to start the process on producing-party infrastructure, and the need to properly dispose of ESI when eDiscovery is complete. We are grateful for the constructive feedback received during the Public Comment period.
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.

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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: Six U.S. states are using AI to determine whether Medicare will cover certain procedures. The Netherlands fined Uber nearly a billion euros over the automated suspension and deactivation of drivers’ accounts. Ars Technica asserted that LLMs are currently incapable of addressing the root causes of prompt injection. A Texas student blew the whistle on a rogue AI attempting to compromise an open-source project. The Ninth Circuit held that Section 230 provides internet platforms with a defense to liability rather than immunity from suit, allowing consolidated social media addiction litigation against Meta and other platforms to continue. Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a U.S. district judge in the Northern District of California, presides over high-stakes, high-tech cases, including litigation involving Meta. OpenAI slowed its roll, including a two-week pause in certain model training, while strengthening its security and alignment practices, and advocated for stronger AI-safety laws in California. David Horrigan brought us back to his 9/11 reporting ahead of his ILTA presentation, commemorating 25 short years. Stephen Embry will be there. Harvey and Thomson Reuters are among the first to use an open Agent Transfer Protocol.
International eDiscovery Trends: Where is the ground truth in eDiscovery? Cristin Traylor wrote about a federal magistrate judge in Austin, Texas, who deemed attorney prompts “work product”, albeit without a written opinion, in In re Agilon Health, Securities Litigation, No. 1:24-cv-00297-DAE (W.D. Tex.). PCMag chronicled current chatbot message-retention practices across 13 models, and Lifehacker detailed the training practices of popular social media platforms. Siemens S7 Series programmable logic controllers (PLCs), the target of an active cyber threat, are old-school devices; source your manuals now for the potential preservation and collection work to come. During the same time frame, a cyberattack shut down a small UK power plant for four days. David Sacks, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, cited favorably Harvey’s use of the Chinese open-weight model Kimi K3. The Messing brothers are behind Altorney’s eDiscovery platform. Humanoid robots boxed, ran, and performed other tasks in China.

Thank you to eDiscovery Today for including Mike Berman’s EDRM blogs, one explaining that “conditional relevance” under Federal Rule of Evidence 104(b) may be on the way out, and another examining judicial immunity when a judge allegedly relied on AI. More thanks for covering Rob Robinson’s analysis of who is accountable for AI-generated plans and the start of the EU e-Evidence Regulation’s eight-hour emergency-response clock.
World Events Impacting Legal Tech: Ukraine struck facilities belonging to another Russian e-commerce company. Russia withdrew its ambassador from the UK amid deteriorating relations, although the reason for his departure remains unclear. Russia is also suspected of sabotaging European weapons factories and reportedly using an AI-guided drone containing Nvidia hardware that selected its target without human oversight. Tankers were hit as new economic sanctions against Iran were about to begin. The U.S. canceled a joint amphibious landing exercise with South Korea. Southeast Asian countries braced for flooding from Tropical Cyclone Narra, while Latvia and Lithuania suffered widespread power outages during another powerful cyclone. Authorities suspect that some of Indonesia’s forest fires were deliberately set to clear land. A roadmap for peace talks emerged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while Ebola cases passed 5,200 during the first 100 days of the outbreak. Moderna and Merck announced positive Phase 3 results for a personalized mRNA melanoma vaccine candidate.

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EDRM Announcements

Upcoming Webinar: Join EDRM Trusted Partner Cellebrite on August 26 for Finding Answers Faster: Genesis for Private Sector Investigations. See how agentic AI can accelerate evidence triage and lead discovery across eDiscovery, incident response, due diligence, and internal investigations.
Survey Request: Our Trusted Partner, Magnet Forensics, has launched its annual State of Enterprise DFIR survey, and we’re glad to help spread the word. The survey takes about 20 minutes and closes August 31, 2026. Please share your insights here.
EDRM 2.0 Update: Public comment on the revised model has officially closed. The project team is now finalizing the model for release. Join the EDRM 2.0 Project Trustees on September 15 for Inside EDRM 2.0: The Trustees Discuss the New Model.
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 340th 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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