David E. Garrett is Managing Director of Stroz Friedberg’s San Francisco office. He actively manages digital forensics and electronic discovery projects for major law firms and corporations involved in civil, criminal, regulatory, and internal corporate matters which often relate to unauthorized access, spoliation, and theft of confidential, proprietary, or trade secret information. Mr. Garrett has extensive electronic discovery experience and regularly consults with top executives, in-house counsel, and outside counsel on electronic discovery cost reduction strategies and legally defensible approaches to the preservation, collection, and production of electronic evidence.
Prior to joining Stroz Friedberg, Mr. Garrett served as Senior Corporate Counsel for Oracle Corporation, where he successfully resolved hundreds of commercial and intellectual property matters, including copyright infringement claims, licensing disputes, bankruptcies, and government investigations. Mr. Garrett advised Oracle’s senior management on long-term litigation and settlement strategies for several large matters, including the defense of a $100 million copyright infringement claim and a $21 million fraud and breach of contract claim. He also spearheaded Oracle’s global electronic discovery initiative, where he led legal and IT teams across multiple business units, evaluated new technologies to increase efficiencies and lower costs, and created extensive internal electronic discovery guidelines and protocols.
Before joining Oracle, Mr. Garrett was a senior associate at Cooley Godward LLP (now known as Cooley Godward Kronish LLP) in San Francisco. At Cooley, he handled numerous complex civil litigation matters, including the successful defense of a large software company and an online retailer against trademark infringement claims, an action to identify and prosecute a computer hacker who attacked the provider of e-commerce business services, and the representation of a semiconductor manufacturer in multi-million dollar claims for costs arising from environmental contamination.
Mr. Garrett is a member of the Sedona Conference Working Group 1 on electronic discovery and Working Group 6 on international electronic information management. He speaks regularly at educational events and legal conferences on various data security, data privacy, and electronic discovery topics, including compliance with litigation holds and the impact of European Union data privacy laws on U.S.-based litigation. He is the author of several articles, including “Confirm or Ignore? Web 2.0 like Facebook offer a wealth of evidence for litigators” which appeared in The Recorder in January 2010.
Mr. Garrett received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his J.D., cum laude, from Santa Clara University, School of Law, where he received the Emery Law Scholarship. He also served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable John F. Herlihy, Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara.