Oard Featured in Documentary on Technology’s Role in Promoting Access to Justice

Doug Oard, a professor in the College of Information Studies (Maryland’s iSchool) with an appointment in UMIACS, is featured in a new documentary film about technology's critical role in helping the legal system advance our freedoms.

“Decade of Discovery,” by filmmaker Joe Looby, will be shown on the University of Maryland campus this Thursday, Oct. 8 from 6–9 p.m. in the Bioscience Research Building, Room 1103.

The film highlights the interaction between legal and information technology professionals, with both sides aiming to solve the problem of how to find the large volumes of information that must be exchanged in complex litigation.

Oard, former director of the Computational Linguistics and Information Processing laboratory, speaks on-camera about the research he conducted on e-discovery.

“I was invited to participate to tell the story of a period of development of the field over a period in which our research group had made some important contributions,” he says.

Oard notes the documentary is not only for students interested in studying e-discovery, but that it also explores an issue of substantial societal importance.

“Our faculty and students are shaping the way the law uses technology for this problem of e-discovery,” he says.

A course on e-discovery will be offered for the fourth time in Spring 2016 through the iSchool.

The screening will also include a panel discussion with Jason Baron, a UMD adjunct professor and former director of litigation for the National Archives and Records Administration, who also appears in the documentary. Joining Baron onstage are director Looby, National Institute of Standards and Technology information retrieval researcher Ellen Voorhees, iSchool alumna Kymberli Shoemaker, and iSchool adjunct professor Hannah Bergman, who will be teaching the Spring 2016 e-discovery course.