LegalWeek 2026 Panel Tackles the Cross-Border Discovery Collision Reshaping Global Litigation
SAN MATEO, CA, UNITED STATES, March 5, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Kiteworks, which empowers organizations to effectively manage risk in every send, share, receive, and use of private data, today announced that Craig Pfister, VP of Sales Engineering at Kiteworks, will moderate the panel session “How New Export Rules Reshape Cross-Border Discovery” at LegalWeek 2026 in New York City on Thursday, March 12, 2026, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Room 405.1.
The session brings together leading practitioners in cross-border litigation, regulatory compliance, and international investigations to examine how rapid changes in export controls, data-transfer laws, and geopolitical dynamics are rewriting the rules for global discovery. Joining Pfister on the panel are Ignatius Grande, Director at BRG; George Rudoy, Principal/Partner at Crowe LLP; and Denise Backhouse, Shareholder and eDiscovery Counsel at Littler Mendelson PC.
The panel discussion comes as new data from the Kiteworks 2026 Data Security and Compliance Risk: Data Sovereignty Report reveals the operational urgency behind these regulatory shifts. The report, a cross-regional survey of risk management, compliance, IT, and security professionals across Canada, the Middle East, and Europe, found that one in three organizations experienced a data sovereignty-related incident in the past 12 months. Among the most common incident types, 12% involved unauthorized cross-border transfers—precisely the kind of scenario that creates immediate legal exposure during active litigation and international investigations.
The report also found that 17% of incidents involved third-party compliance failures and another 17% involved data breaches with sovereignty implications, while 15% triggered regulatory investigations. These findings highlight the risks legal teams face when designing cross-border discovery workflows and responding to courts when key evidence cannot freely leave a jurisdiction.
“The rules governing cross-border data movement are changing faster than most legal teams’ workflows can keep up,” said Craig Pfister, VP of Sales Engineering at Kiteworks. “Export controls, blocking statutes, and sovereignty laws are converging to create a landscape where unauthorized cross-border transfers aren’t just compliance violations—they’re litigation risks. When those transfers involve evidence in active matters, the legal team’s data handling protocols become the front line of risk management.”
What the Panel Will Address
The session will break down emerging export rules shaping international eDiscovery and offer practical guidance for keeping litigation strategy compliant across jurisdictions. Discussion topics include what recent export-control changes mean for cross-border data transfers; designing discovery workflows that respect national security restrictions and foreign blocking statutes; working with regulators and courts when key evidence cannot freely leave a jurisdiction; and strategies for minimizing delays and risk when conducting multi-country investigations.
Data Sovereignty Challenge Facing Legal Teams
The report paints a picture of organizations that know the rules but struggle to enforce them operationally. Across all three regions surveyed, 44% described themselves as “very well informed” about sovereignty requirements—yet incident rates ranged from 23% in Canada to 44% in the Middle East. Technical infrastructure changes (59%) and legal expertise (53%) lead the resource drain list.
For legal teams managing cross-border litigation, these findings translate into operational challenges at every stage of discovery—from identifying which jurisdictions apply, to designing review workflows that keep data in-country where blocking statutes apply, to generating audit trails that prove jurisdictional compliance.
Kiteworks and Cross-Border Data Governance
Kiteworks Private Data Network addresses the cross-border challenges the panel will discuss through capabilities designed for provable sovereignty. Kiteworks retains encryption key custody within the customer’s environment, ensuring the provider is technically unable to decrypt content—even under legal compulsion. Its flexible deployment options—on-premises, private cloud, hybrid, and FedRAMP—allow organizations to store sensitive content exclusively within their home jurisdiction, with geofencing enforced through configurable IP controls. Centralized, immutable audit logs and automated compliance reporting with preconfigured templates for GDPR, PIPEDA, PDPL, DORA, and NIS 2 produce the exportable evidence that satisfies regulators, courts, and opposing counsel on demand.
For cross-border discovery specifically, Kiteworks SafeEDIT addresses one of the most persistent challenges legal teams face—namely, enabling external counsel and reviewers to interact with sensitive documents without those files ever leaving the originating jurisdiction. SafeEDIT’s next-generation digital rights management streams an editable rendition of documents directly to a standard browser—no downloads, no plugins, no local copies. The original file remains within the organization’s secure environment while authorized parties view and edit in real time. For matters governed by blocking statutes or data localization requirements, SafeEDIT enables collaboration on jurisdiction-restricted evidence without triggering a cross-border transfer.
Kiteworks also announced the availability of iManage Cloud integration for the Kiteworks platform. Previously available only for on-premises iManage deployments, the plugin now extends to iManage Cloud, enabling legal teams to securely send and share DMS files directly from iManage folder and file menus while all files remain within the Kiteworks governed environment.
“Legal teams handling cross-border matters need ironclad control over every document that enters or leaves their environment,” said Camilo Artiga-Purcell, General Counsel at Kiteworks. “Extending our iManage integration to the cloud means attorneys can securely share sensitive files from iManage Cloud workspaces with the same governance, audit trail, and encryption protections Kiteworks has always provided.”
Session Details
Event: LegalWeek 2026
Session: How New Export Rules Reshape Cross-Border Discovery
Date and Time: Thursday, March 12, 2026, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location: Room 405.1, New York Hilton Midtown
Registration: www.event.law.com/legalweek
The full 2026 Data Security and Compliance Risk: Data Sovereignty Report is available for download.
About Kiteworks
Kiteworks’ mission is to empower organizations to effectively manage risk in every send, share, receive, and use of private data. The Kiteworks platform provides customers with a Private Data Network that delivers data governance, compliance, and protection. The platform unifies, tracks, controls, and secures sensitive data moving within, into, and out of their organization, significantly improving risk management and ensuring regulatory compliance on all private data exchanges. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Kiteworks protects over 100 million end-users and thousands of global enterprises and government agencies.
David Schutzman
Kiteworks
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