LegalTech Keynote: Judges Panel

Kimberly C. Priest Johnson currently serves as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of Texas, Sherman Division in Plano, Texas.

Prior to joining the judiciary, Judge Johnson clerked for the Honorable Barbara M.G. Lynn. After her clerkship with Chief Judge Lynn, she practiced with both international law firms and boutique law firms, including her own law firm, where she focused on complex business and commercial litigation and federal criminal defense. Judge Johnson also represented indigent defendants as a member of the Criminal Justice Act Panel for both the Eastern and Northern Districts of Texas. In addition, Judge Johnson served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Texas, where she prosecuted white collar crimes.

Judge Johnson is an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law where she has taught Trial Advocacy and PreTrial Practice and Advocacy, a class she designed and added to the law school’s curriculum. She also is an adjunct professor at Notre Dame School of Law.

Judge Johnson earned a J.D., cum laude, from Southern Methodist Law School and a M.S, cum laude, and B.B.A., cum laude, from the University of North Texas. She has been recognized by numerous organizations including, but not limited to, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, National Trial Lawyers Top 100 Criminal Defense Attorneys, DCEO’s Women Leaders in the Law, Law 360’s Female Powerbrokers, and as a Texas Rising Star and Super Lawyer. In addition, Judge Johnson serves on a number of community boards, including Dallas CASA Children’s Council, Women’s Auxiliary, Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, and Dallas Summer Musicals. She also regularly volunteers at her church, Highland Park United Methodist Church, and her children’s schools. Judge Johnson and her husband Brett, also a lawyer who clerked for the Honorable Judge Paul Brown, have five children, ages 16, 12, 10, 9, and 7.

Judge Conti is the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. She has authored articles on e-discovery and is a frequent lecturer at seminars on e-discovery. She is on the editorial review team for the 2017 edition of Judicial Resources to be published by The Sedona Conference, which will address a variety of e-discovery and technology issues. Judge Conti currently is a judicial advisor and a member of the steering committee for the Sedona Conference’s Working Group 10 on Patent Litigation Best Practices. Judge Conti was a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and is a former Chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on the Administration of the Bankruptcy System. She received the American Inns of Court 2009 Professionalism Award for the Third Circuit and the 2016 W. Edward Sell Business Lawyer Award from the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Business Law Section.

Prior to her appointment, she was a shareholder with the Pittsburgh office of Buchanan Ingersoll, Professional Corporation, now Buchanan Ingersoll Rooney (“Buchanan”), and prior to joining Buchanan she was a partner with Kirkpatrick, Lockhart, Johnson & Hutchison, now known as K&L Gates LLP. Judge Conti was a Professor of Law at Duquesne University and taught courses on civil procedure, corporations, corporate finance, corporate reorganizations and bankruptcy.

Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte was appointed in 1998. She has presided over numerous civil cases through trial or other disposition, including patent, trademark, copyright, employment, civil rights and environmental cases. She also has conducted over 1000 settlement conferences, handled criminal matters, and resolved discovery disputes.

A 1982 graduate of Yale Law School and a Marshall Scholar, she clerked for the Honorable Marilyn Hall Patel in the Northern District of California. She was a partner at the boutique litigation firm of Turner & Brorby, and an Administrative Law Judge for the California Department of Insurance. In 1996, she began serving as Chief of Special Litigation for the San Francisco City Attorney=s Office, and was named a Lawyer of the Year by California Lawyer. She has authored articles on patent litigation and settlement in the Northern California ABTL [Association of Business Trial Lawyers] Report, and has written on e-discovery. Judge Laporte serves on the Board of Governors for the Northern California Chapter of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers and the Executive Committee of the Litigation Section of the Bar Association of San Francisco. She is also a judicial observer for the Sedona Conference Working Group on Electronic Document Retention and Production.

Judge Laporte has recently been appointed the Alternative Dispute Resolution Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of California, is a past chair of the Magistrate Judge Executive Board of the Ninth Circuit, and was a member of the Jury Trial Improvement Committee of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals from 2002 to 2009. She regularly speaks at legal conferences and judicial education programs on patent litigation, jury trials, e-discovery, employment law, settlement, and other topics.

The Honorable Andrew J. Peck served for 23 years as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of New York, including a term as Chief Magistrate Judge from 2004 to 2005. Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Peck was in private practice for 17 years, focusing on commercial and entertainment litigation, including copyright and trademark matters, with extensive trial experience.

At DLA Piper, Judge Peck advises on innovative and efficient solutions to the challenges of information management, both within and outside the litigation context. He frequently speaks at conferences concerning eDiscovery issues. Since joining DLA Piper, Judge Peck has been retained to serve as special discovery counsel to clients and law firms, and to submit expert reports in state court cases. Judge Peck is ranked by Chambers as "Recognized Practitioner" for "Litigation: E-Discovery in USA- Nationwide."

Judge Peck also is available to serve as an arbitrator, mediator and Special Master. In addition to serving directly through DLA Piper, Judge Peck is on the arbitration and mediation rosters of the American Arbitration Association (AAA), Federal Arbitration, Inc., and National Arbitration and Mediation (NAM).

Judge Peck is recognized internationally for bringing electronic discovery competency to the attention of both the judiciary and bar. Indeed, he is widely described as the first judge to tackle the subject of e-discovery head on, most notably in the influential 1995 decision Anti-Monopoly v. Hasbro, in which Judge Peck found that "it is black letter law that computerized data is discoverable if relevant." Also among his legacy rulings is the 2012 employment class action Monique Da Silva Moore, et. al. v. Publicis Groupe & MSL Group, the first judicial decision approving the use of technology-assisted review. By 2015, Judge Peck declared in Rio Tinto v. Valle that it was black-letter law that if the responding party wished to use TAR, courts would allow it. In March 2018, the New York Law Journal called Judge Peck "one of e-discovery's most influential figures."

Among the honors he has received, American Lawyer named him to its list of the Top 50 Innovators of the Last 50 Years as its Judicial E-Discovery Innovator.