Paul Weiner is a blue flame thinker and Chambers Band 1-ranked eDiscovery lawyer, who focuses on the cutting-edge of law, data and technology to solve clients’ business challenges from the explosion of data and emergent workplace technologies, serving as a shareholder and Littler’s National eDiscovery Counsel. As quoted by Chambers: "It's not just about the quantity and quality of the advice, but also the presentation: is this person someone I can put before C-suite executives, particularly for complex matters like eDiscovery. Paul is that person: he's very knowledgeable in his subject matter but can have a conversation with you where you don't feel out of your depth, which is very important given the work he does. He has great strategic thinking."
In a world where technology has moved from the realm of science fiction to everyday reality, and business is conducted and people live their lives digitally–and globally–Paul marries technology skills, litigation experience and deep subject matter knowledge, pushing the limits of innovation to provide enhanced value to multinational clients. His North Star is winning your case, and he never loses sight that the strategic goal of all discovery is to quickly address the merits to win. From his hands-on experience, particularly in high-exposure and often precedent-setting state and federal class, FLSA collective and California PAGA cases, Paul brings a practical and cost-effective perspective to what can often be esoteric eDiscovery issues that can sidetrack a case from its merits. Paul is also a skilled advocate and "explainer": one of his strengths is persuasively distilling complex technology and legal concepts into simple, easily understood language, so non-technical executives, lawyers, mediators, and judges can readily apply them.
Paul also leads a high-performing team of dedicated eDiscovery lawyers, litigation support project managers and specialists, programmers, developers, data analysts, database administrators, and trainers who provide sophisticated advice, forward-thinking strategy, and hands-on litigation solutions to clients globally, leveraging leading-edge technology, project management skills and alternative pricing strategies. He also built and manages the Littler Discovery Data Center that handles electronic evidence processing and hosting activities, using best-of-breed technologies (Littler was the 4th law firm in the country to adopt Relativity and was the first AMLAW 100 to migrate to Relativity One, see Littler Goes All In With Relativity One), and quality assurance workflows, providing clients with a turn-key solution that typically is more cost-effective and streamlined than using outside vendors.
Industry leadership roles afford Paul opportunities to transform the field. He co-chairs the Advisory Board for the Georgetown Law Global Advanced eDiscovery Institute - which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2023, and consistently features more state and federal judges steeped in eDiscovery than any other program in the country, serves on the Working Group Series Leadership Council of The Sedona Conference, served multiple terms on the Steering Committee of Sedona Working Group 1, is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation (limited to 1% of lawyers admitted to practice in the U.S.), and is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management.
Paul is known for scanning the horizon - not just to anticipate the future of the field, but to shape it. He is a contributing author to the Electronic Discovery Institute Judges’ Guide to eDiscovery – specifically the “In Employment Cases, eDiscovery is a Two-Way Street” chapter for use by the Federal Bench (in today’s digital world there is often a wealth of discoverable ESI controlled by plaintiffs, which levels the playing field in what was traditionally viewed as asymmetrical litigation, as discovery obligations apply just as forcefully to individual plaintiffs – and their counsel), a contributing author to the Electronic Discovery Reference Model’s Using Special Masters and eDiscovery Mediators to Resolve eDiscovery Disputes: A Bench Book for Judges and Attorneys, and the Executive Editor of The Sedona Conference’s Commentary on Rules 34 and 45 Possession, Custody or Control (analyzing a circuit split to determine whether a litigant or subpoenaed non-party has “possession, custody, or control” of documents or data under Rules 34 and 45, and recommending the Rules Committee adopt a uniform, national standard modeled on the “Legal Right” test followed by the majority of circuits). He has published numerous thought-leadership articles in preeminent journals and national publications such as ABA Journal of Litigation, ABA Employment & Labor Relations Law Newsletter, Law Technology News, Law360, New York Law Journal, and National Law Journal, among many others. He frequently lectures at prestigious conferences and law schools to educate C-Suite executives, judges, lawyers, and law students about demystifying issues arising from the worldwide data deluge, new workplace technologies that emerge almost daily, and changes to legal standards, industry guidance and court rules as they develop to keep pace.
Based upon his innovative approaches to complex issues, Paul has been appointed an eDiscovery Special Master in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and in multiple counties of the Court of Common Pleas of Pennsylvania, and is on the roster of eDiscovery Special Masters for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
For over a decade, Paul has been one of a select group of lawyers in the world ranked for eDiscovery by Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers (1 of 8 in Band 1), Chambers & Partners Global, and a Thought Leader Nationwide by Who’s Who Legal: Litigation. In 2019, Who’s Who also ranked Littler as one of only two “Leading Law Firms” in the world in eDiscovery, and every year since Chambers started ranking departments in 2020, Littler has been one of only a few ranked for eDiscovery by Chambers USA.
Paul is also a culture carrier at Littler, having served in a variety of leadership roles, including having served as Chair of the Nominating Committee (selects the Board of Directors), Chair of the Governance Committee (sets, enforces and periodically updates firm governance standards), Chair of the Innovation Advisory Council (whose focus is breaking down traditional legal processes and re-engineering them for the better, resulting in data-driven and technology-enhanced approaches to delivering business solutions) and as Associate General Counsel. With the Firm’s Managing Director, he co-moderates the general session of Littler's annual Executive Employer conference.
Outside of his law practice, Paul is active in the community, the bar and pro bono organizations, having served as a board member of breastcancer.org, and the President and long-time Executive Committee Member of The Temple American Inn of Court, including as Ambassador to the International Inns of Court, where he co-chaired several Cross Border Programs presented by the Temple Inn and Gray’s Inn, London, in Philadelphia, London, and virtually (during COVID). In 2023 (along with the Honorable Cynthia Rufe), he was Co-Recipient of the Inaugural Honorable Lowell A Reed, Jr. Distinguished Professionalism Award.
Selected Matters
- Serve as National eDiscovery counsel for U.S. retailer with $50 billion in annual sales and over 4,000 stores, by providing global eDiscovery advice on employment litigation matters and company-wide eDiscovery policies, practices and procedures, and serving as lead eDiscovery counsel for multiple federal and state class, collective actions and California Private Attorney General Act lawsuits pending against the company’s various divisions, alleging claims ranging from alleged unpaid time for Bag/Security Checks, missed statutory meal and rest breaks, failure to provide suitable seating, and off-the-clock work for closing/opening stores, including implementing strategies for avoiding the extreme operational burdens and significant costs associated with nationwide preservation at the outset of class/collective/PAGA actions and streamlining the production of data from structured databases.
- Serve as National eDiscovery Counsel for a $12 billion healthcare system with 60,000 employees, 20 hospitals, hundreds of clinical locations, and a multi-million member health insurance division, providing global eDiscovery advice on litigation matters and company-wide eDiscovery, AI and data governance policies, practices and procedures. In addition to advising on specific litigation cases, Paul’s advice has encompassed the completion of a backup tape remediation project (involving over 10 petabytes of data), updating litigation hold and information governance procedures to account for new technologies, and educating outside counsel on contemporary eDiscovery standards and strategies.
- Directed the discovery strategy for an unprecedented Union organizing campaign by the NLRB leveled at a global retail organization, involving hundreds of Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) Charges, and associated ULP trials, across the country. In a break from 40 years of practice, the NLRB served extensive preservation demands, requests for evidence, and subpoenas seeking ESI in these cases. This aggressive and unprecedented approach to ESI was consistent with other unprecedented positions the NLRB asserted in this portfolio of cases, including advocating to the Board that it overrule Shell Oil Co., Inc., 77 NLRB 1306 (1948), and its progeny” – despite the fact that Shell Oil has been controlling law for over 70 years. Activities included standing up new practices and procedures for preserving, identifying, collecting, culling, searching and producing massive volumes of data in accordance with the accelerated deadlines mandated by Board procedure, and addressing unique burden, proportionality and privilege objections (including unique privileges like Berbeglia) in the labor context. The eDiscovery Team also took a front-line role in trials handling discovery and evidentiary issues, including in one trial that was reported as the largest ULP case in the NLRB’s history. This portfolio of cases also resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ordering lower courts to apply a stringent four-factor test (verses a more lenient standard used by lower courts) when deciding whether to grant NLRB 10(j) petitions for emergency relief.
- Provide global eDiscovery advice on employment litigation matters and company-wide eDiscovery policies, practices and procedures (including eDiscovery training to in-house law department and other outside counsel), to a global, multinational chemical company with approximately 80,000 employees and customers in over 100 countries worldwide.
- Directed all eDiscovery in a lawsuit resulting from an EEOC systemic investigation of individuals who worked at hundreds of distribution centers across the country during a 15-year period, that included: collecting for culling, searching, reviewing and producing email from three systems/email archives; preparation of a privilege log with over 16,000 individual entries; implementing a standard approach for collecting data from hundreds local facilities; and pushing back on custodians and search terms proposed by the EEOC, including documenting burdens of tens of millions of dollars even after post-culling of data.
- In a high-profile portfolio of cases involving government agencies alleging constitutional violations, created strategy for legally searching, reviewing and producing data sought in discovery that was potentially protected from disclosure by the Investigating Grand Jury Act, 42 Pa. Stat. §§ 4541, et al.
- Directed all eDiscovery activities for precedent-setting California-class action that challenged a piece-rate system for compensation with industry-wide implications for the trucking business. The class encompassed over 11,000 current members and covered a 15-year period and activities included extracting, restoring, or collecting over 80 billion database records, 6,000 tables, and 130,000 data fields, and culling, sorting and reviewing that data to limit relevant productions to about 1 billion electronic records, including creating a litigation-specific “Data Dictionary” for the complex IT systems (including decommissioned legacy systems) for use by all parties’ experts. This supported decertifying the class on the eve of trial, as the produced data conclusively proved that individual questions, a lack of common proof, and manageability issues, made continued class treatment unworkable.