Weekly Letter to Our EDRM Global Community – 22 September 2026

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Word of the week: Safety

In legal tech last week, AI disputes around liability, competition and intellectual property played out in the courts while concerns about safety of AI systems dominated the press, politicians and industry conversation. World travelers arrived in New York for the UN General Assembly and our community started packing for its trek to Chicago for RelFest in the face of increased geopolitical disputes.

Join EDRM’s session at RelFest Chicago 2026, EDRM in Action: Framework Updates and Faster, Lower-Cost Email Discovery, on Wednesday, September 30, from 3:30–4:15 p.m. CT. Learn how EDRM 2.0 and IGRM 4.1 support Legal Data Intelligence and explore practical approaches to email deduplication and cross-border data movement. Travel safely, and let us know if you are going to be there!

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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Updates from Around the Globe

Global Legal Tech Developments: In California, Governor Newsom signed an executive order regarding AI safety. Google’s Gemini joined the ranks of jailbreaking AI during testing. A Microsoft executive called AI scraping the largest theft of labor in human history in an unredacted filing.  China’s Supreme People’s Court issued guidance on AI related disputes. Tech executives were invited to the White House dinner with Xi. The US proposed an international notification mechanism for AI incidents. In the absence of the US Congress, CFTC filed crypto asset rulemaking with the White House. OpenAI released its own “model misalignment reporting framework” and Anthropic published its approach to measuring the pace of AI development. Rand put forth a research report on the insurability of AI. The call and response on pacing AI development sparked an antitrust suit. US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent dismissed liability exemptions for AI, a Pentagon spokesperson asserted that executive power and product liability exposure are enough AI regulation and the US DOJ downplayed antitrust concerns for collaborating on AI safety.

International eDiscovery Trends: Michael Berman analyzed cases on standing orders for AI disclosure, unsupervised custodian self-collection, and an adverse inference sanction and more in Bulldog Law for discovery misrepresentations and recalcitrance. Thank you to eDiscovery Today for covering Mike’s posts. John Tredennick’s Merlin put the proprietary AI recent releases to the test on legal tasks, and shared the results on accuracy, cost and time. Ralph Losey explored the new map that is EDRM 2.0. RelativityOne is now Relativity aiR, which now integrates with OpenAI via the Model Context Protocol. CISO’s have their work cut out for them governing AI with the speedy flat, unsegmented networks needing to be remediated to avoid AI hacks. Keep up with all thing eDiscovery Day at eDiscoveryDay.com.

World Events Impacting Legal Tech: World leaders convene in New York City at the UN. Ukrainian drones attacked a large Moscow oil refinery. The Kremlin seized Nestle assets in Russia during its election voting. Saudi Arabia’s airport was attacked and Aramco stopped delivering crude oil supplies to some refiners after a pipeline attack. Over 15 people were killed in a suicide bombing at a mosque adjacent to a police station in Pakistan. The US FBI and Coast Guard boarded hacked oil tankers heading for the US. The US almost boarded a Chinese ship over a hallucination about nuclear arms being transported to the Mideast. Warren Buffett retired as Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Oktoberfest opened with revelry.

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Weekly Community Support Call: Join us every Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET on Zoom for support and camaraderie. Email info@edrm.net for an invitation to our 343rd 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 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 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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