The final Star Wars movie is now playing in the theaters. But how many lawyers would want their assignment to be as a "Death Star Pilot?" For an interesting tale of major league electronic discovery, read the Corporate Counsel feature "This is Spinal Tech."

From the article: "The electronic review conference room was like the back of a special operations truck, says Swain. Forensics Consulting Solutions, which had advised Jeffer, Mangels on electronic discovery, brought in seven black computers to run the Patterns software. The attorneys became known as the Death Star Pilots, and their days were regimented. From 9 a.m. until 8 p.m., they reviewed the data in 1,000-document batches. A special master delegate was always present to ensure that attorneys weren’t saving, printing, or copying files. (Medtronic had agreed to provide the data for Patterns in its original file format under the condition that it couldn’t be copied.) When the delegate needed a bathroom break, work stopped, and the data hard drives were locked up."

It worked. A dozen Death Star Pilots processed 44 million electronic pages in less than four months, an incriminating spreadsheet was located and the jury rendered a huge verdict. Plus a dozen or so lawyers have really interesting entries for their resumes should they want to use them.

Thanks to the Electronic Discovery Today Blog for the pointer.