It was with almost uncontained glee that Obiter sat through a day-long conference on e-disclosure recently attended by the great and the good, including High Court judge Sir Peter Cresswell, US judge Shira Scheindlin and the ubiquitous Professor Richard Susskind. The panels were a liberal mix of Americans and Brits, with the goal of information exchange and mutual enlightenment. Next to Obiter sat a lawyer from a boutique firm who helpfully outlined where reality separated from the panel discussions, and who was reduced to almost helpless snorting at the suggestion by UK members of the panel that major disputes on this side of the pond might 'only' contain 20,000 documents through which to wade. The Americans have it far worse, with litigation document numbers spiralling into the six-digit range, though Obiter's new-found classmate thought that UK actions of comparable weight would have document numbers far higher than the 20K touted. Nonetheless, at the end we all felt we had learned something.

On the way out, however, Obiter tried to swap the hefty folder of papers attendees allegedly needed, which weighed the same as a puppy, for a CD. After all, there must be an electronic version of an e-disclosure conference tome... sadly, no.