Ruth Hauswirth

Ruth C. Hauswirth is Special Counsel, Head of Litigation and eDiscovery & Information Retention Counseling, overseeing Cooley’s eDiscovery and Information Retention & Governance counseling practice. Ruth leads Cooley's Litigation & eDiscovery Services department, which strategically leverages legal technology and data analytics to handle electronically stored information in complex litigation matters from evidence preservation, collection, review and production, through trial. Ruth also advises clients on enterprise information retention, disposition, and governance, including functional policy development, implementation and compliance in numerous regulatory and jurisdictional areas.

Ruth advises businesses to create effective litigation readiness and legal hold response programs, as well as proactive information management practices focused on vendor management, BYOD, social media and other policies. Ruth also serves on Cooley's risk management committee and is involved in the creation and implementation of risk management policies and compliance programs for Cooley.

Currently Ruth is an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, where she teaches eDiscovery law & practice. She also taught law & technology at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in 2018. Ruth is a member of the SD ESI Forum Steering Committee, and a member of The Sedona Conference, Working Group on Electronic Document Retention and Production. Ruth co-chairs the Life & Law Committee of Lawyers Club of San Diego and is a trained mindfulness facilitator through UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

From 1999-2000, Ruth served as assistant dean for law and technology at Santa Clara University School of Law. During her tenure, she developed and managed the law school's nationally recognized High Tech Law Program and intellectual property curriculum. Ruth served as an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. In 2000, Ruth was named one of the Bay Area's “Top Lawyers under Forty” by the San Francisco Daily Journal.

Ruth speaks frequently at local and national conferences and publishes on a variety of legal topics, including:

• Information Retention & eDiscovery: New Practices and Developments, Association of Corporate Counsel, September 22, 2021, San Diego
• Mental Health and Work/Life Balance: Tools and Techniques to Avoid Burnout, International Legal Technology Association, August 24, 2021
• Defensible Preservation of Relevant ESI, Driven Inc., Webinar, June 23, 2021
• Free-Range Mindfulness: Practice in Real Life, Lawyers Club of San Diego, Life & Law Committee, April 5, 2021, Webinar
• Key to Competence: Be Mindful of Your Well-Being, California Lawyers Association, October 15, 2020, Webinar
• Mindfulness Overview and Practice for Legal Professionals, Ankura Consulting, September 17, 2020, Webinar
• Wellness for Legal Teams, Relativity Fest 2020, September 8, 2020, Webinar
• When Collaborating Apps Stop Cooperating, Women in eDiscovery, Webinar, July 8, 2020
• Skills for Resilience in Legal Practice, National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL), Women in IP & Technology Law, May 20, 2020, Webinar
• Overwhelmed? What Mindfulness Research Teaches Us about Benefits of Being Present, Association of Corporate Counsel, April 16, 2020, Webinar
• Preparing for the California Consumer Data Privacy Act & Discovery, Techno-Security & Digital Forensics Conference, March 11, 2020, San Diego
• Mindfulness & Self-Compassion for Legal Professionals, Lawyers Club of San Diego, Life & Law Committee, March 2, 2020, San Diego
• Mobile Data: Issues in Data Privacy and Data Protection, Legal Week 2020, February 5, 2020, New York
• GDPR and the Law of Data Privacy, Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, July 24, 2019, Spokane, Washington
• Addressing Imposter Syndrome – A Presentation for Legal Professionals; Women in eDiscovery, Southern California Chapters, July 10, 2019, San Diego
• Back to the Future: Emerging Tech in eDiscovery, moderator, San Diego ESI Forum, May, 16, 2019, San Diego
• Impermanence in eDiscovery: Effects of Ephemeral Messaging, Techno-Security & Digital Forensics Conference, March 12, 2019, San Diego
• Transformational Governance, Data Privacy and Security – Podcast, TransPerfect Legal Services, 2018
• Impermanence in eDiscovery: Collection of Ephemeral Messaging, Social Media & Other Emerging Media and Applications as Evidence, San Diego ESI Forum, June 21, 2018, San Diego
• Using Emerging Technology to Execute Forensic Collections from Slack, Jira, Hipchat and other Cutting Edge Data Sources, Legal Week NY 2018, January 30, 2018, New York
• Teaching Through Technology, panel at Association of American Law Schools, San Diego, January 2018, San Diego
• Electronically Stored Information: How eDiscovery is Really Working, Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, February 21, 2017, San Diego
• 2017 Case Law Update, Epiq Systems, Inc., Webinar, December 13, 2017
• The New Rule 37(e) - Preservation & Sanctions and The New Scope of Discovery-Rule 26(b) (1) Proportionality – Sea Change or Minor Tweak? Today’s General Counsel, December 5, 2017, Los Angeles, October 16, 2017, San Francisco

Articles, Podcasts & Blogs

• 2019 Transformational Governance – TransPerfect Legal Services
• eDiscovery Bits & Bytes Judicial Newsletter, “EU’s Sweeping Privacy Rules Impact on US Discovery” Fall 2018
• FRCP: Playing by the New Rules, Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, Feb 2017