Hon. James C. Francis IV

About

James C. Francis IV is an arbitrator, mediator, and special master with JAMS. From 2017 through 2019, he was a Distinguished Lecturer at the CUNY School of Law, where he taught Electronic Discovery and other courses. From 1985 until 2017, he served as a United States Magistrate Judge in the Southern District of New York. In that capacity, he authored numerous cutting-edge opinions in e-discovery, including decisions on cost-shifting, ephemeral data, spoliation sanctions, and proportionality. One of his cases, concerning a search warrant for electronic data held in a server outside the United States, was heard by the Supreme Court. Judge Francis is the author of Good Intentions Gone Awry: Privacy as Proportionality Under Rule 26(b)(1), __ San Diego L. Rev. __ (2022) (forthcoming), and co-author of Limits on Limiting Inherent Authority: Rule 37(e) and the Power to Sanction, 17 Sedona Conf. J. 613 (2016). He speaks frequently on electronic discovery and is a judicial emeritus member of the Steering Committee of Sedona Conference Working Group 6 on International Electronic Information Management, Discovery and Disclosure; the Advisory Committee of the Georgetown Advanced E-Discovery Institute; the Advisory Board of the Cardozo Data Law Initiative; and the Global Advisory Council of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM). Judge Francis received his B.A. from Yale College, his juris doctor degree from the Yale Law School, and a masters degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Sessions

• Sanctions, Sanctions, Sanctions: Getting And Escaping!
• Consortium