[EDRM Editor’s Note: EDRM is happy to amplify our Trusted Partners news and events. EDRM is once again a proud sponsor of eDiscovery Day.]
Founded by Exterro in 2015, eDiscovery Day returns on December 3, 2026, for its 12th annual celebration of the eDiscovery community.
This year, eDiscovery Day will open with a 75-minute anchor keynote, “In a New AI World, Who Does the Work Now?,” beginning at 11:00 AM ET. The session will bring together new industry research, a discussion of eDiscovery beyond its traditional silo, a live Oral Argument on AI presided over by a sitting U.S. federal judge, and the announcement of the inaugural Rising Stars of eDiscovery.
New Research on AI in eDiscovery
The keynote will include findings from the eDiscovery Day 2026 Comprehensive AI Adoption and Strategy Survey. Founding organization Exterro and co-sponsors EDRM, ACEDS, eDiscovery Today, and LegalOps.com are partnering to conduct the survey, which examines legal professionals’ opinions about AI use today, potential use cases, risks, benefits, and goals.
The results will form the basis of an educational report to be issued as part of eDiscovery Day. Legal professionals are invited to contribute their perspectives by taking the survey.
Looking Beyond the Traditional eDiscovery Silo
Connie Brenton, CEO and Founder of LegalOps.com and former Vice President of Law, Technology and Operations at NetApp, will discuss leading eDiscovery outside the traditional organizational silo and what that means for professionals whose responsibilities have expanded to include discovery.
AI Goes on Trial
At the center of the keynote is a live Oral Argument. Four practitioners will argue assigned sides of one motion: within three years, most eDiscovery workflows will run with AI executing and humans approving, rather than the other way around. Two will argue for the motion, and two will argue against it.
Hon. Xavier Rodriguez, U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Texas, who has served on the federal bench since 2003, will question the advocates from the bench.
Arguing the case will be:
- Lea Malani Bays, a partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP who counsels the firm’s multidisciplinary eDiscovery team and helped secure the $131 million settlement in Bennett v. Sprint Nextel Corp.;
- Porschia Clarke, Counsel at Duke Energy, who leads eDiscovery modernization inside one of the country’s most heavily regulated industries;
- David Cowen, founder of the SOLID Summit Series and President of The Cowen Group, who has spent two decades connecting the legal industry’s senior leaders and now tracks where AI is creating new roles across the profession; and
- Khrhysna “Khrys” McKinney, founder and CEO of K. L. McKinney, a thirty-year legal technology veteran and a trustee of EDRM’s AI Ethics and Bias project.
Doug Austin, editor of eDiscovery Today, will moderate the Oral Argument. The audience will be polled before and after the debate, and the side that moves the audience’s opinion wins.
We started eDiscovery Day in 2015 on a simple belief: this industry solves its hardest problems faster when it solves them together. Eleven years later, the question in front of us has changed, but that belief hasn’t. The debate is no longer whether AI belongs in this work, it’s the exact point where a legal team hands over the objective and where they hold the line. That’s not a question any one company should be settling for the rest of the industry. It’s why we put it in front of a sitting federal judge instead of a panel that already agrees. Eleven years in, this community still shows up to argue it out in public. That’s the part I’m proudest of.
Bobby Balachandran, Founder and CEO, Exterro.
Recognizing the Rising Stars of eDiscovery
The keynote will also introduce the inaugural Rising Stars of eDiscovery, recognizing practitioners with five years or less of experience in the eDiscovery field who are already making an impact. The keynote will announce the five inaugural Rising Stars live.
Know a rising star? Submit a nomination by November 6, 2026.
Join EDRM for eDiscovery Day
eDiscovery Day takes place Thursday, December 3, 2026. “In a New AI World, Who Does the Work Now?” begins at 11:00 AM ET and runs for 75 minutes. Attendance is free.
Register for the eDiscovery Day keynote.
Assisted by GAI and LLM Technologies per EDRM’s GAI and LLM Policy.
