John Rabiej, deputy director of the Bolch Judicial Institute, and Jim Waldron, director of EDRM, the e-discovery organization operated by the Bolch Judicial Institute, spoke at the Yale Law School Workshop on Court Records Access, which was sponsored jointly by Yale’s Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic (MFIA) and its Collaboration for Research Integrity and Transparency (CRIT), on March 25.
The workshop brought together subject-matter experts to identify problems and develop strategic responses to issues concerning sealed court records, protective orders, and other transparency issues in judicial matters. A diverse group of advocates, academics, law school clinics, journalists, former judges, court clerks, and judicial administrators addressed the growing problems raised by secrecy court orders, especially their effects in mass-tort MDLs that consist of thousands of individual cases.
Rabiej and Waldron took the lead on a session that focused on the rules-amendment process as a potential means to address these issues.
The Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic is a law student clinic whose dual missions are to support robust investigative journalism in the digital age and to advance the public’s right of access to information needed for democracy to function. The Collaboration for Research Integrity and Transparency is an inter-disciplinary initiative of Yale’s Schools of Law, Medicine and Public Health to enhance the quality and transparency of the research base for medical products.