November 3, 2011

On Record: BU Law alumnus Jason R. Baron ('80) wins prestigious Emmett Leahy Award

To an outsider, it might seem odd for someone to describe working with archives as being a “dream job.” Indeed, images of monotonous filing and long hours of desk research immediately come to mind. But if defending White House recordkeeping practices sounds exciting, or if rescuing FDR and Abraham Lincoln-era documents from online auctions sounds appealing, then think again about the records management industry, and consider the career path of Jason R. Baron, the recipient of the 2011 Emmett Leahy Award for Outstanding Contributions and Accomplishments in the Records and Information Management Profession.

Baron graduated from BU Law in 1980, and has since dedicated his career to public service and the preservation of the government's documents, most recently as Director of Litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C. A long time proponent of the use of new technologies in recordkeeping and research, Baron’s advocacy has long been lauded as invaluable and innovative, and now, he has been formally recognized for his efforts.

At a ceremony at the NARA headquarters on September 15, 2011, Baron was officially presented the Emmett Leahy Award, which honors the spirit and innovation in records and information management embodied by the titular Leahy, also known as the “father” of records management in North America.

According to a press release issued by the Award Committee, “Baron’s leadership, including educating the profession on best practices in search and retrieval in legal discovery, represents an outstanding contribution to the profession.”

“Jason Baron has made an invaluable contribution to the way our society considers how to find what we need from an ever expanding source of information,” echoed U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola at the ceremony. “No one has confronted that question with more creativity and imagination.”

Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero also praised Baron’s work at the ceremony, calling him a thought leader—from a legal standpoint—in pushing the federal government to adopt forms of smart electronic archiving and finding better ways to search through these archives. “[Baron] has become what many people regard as the ‘go to’ lawyer in the government on issues involving preservation of electronic records.”

As an attorney, Baron’s journey into the recordkeeping practice was fairly gradual, but ultimately serendipitous. “I confess I couldn’t really have imagined what my professional career would consist of when in 1977 I wrote an honors thesis in college on the privacy implications of a vast electronic database maintained by the FBI,” Baron explained in his acceptance speech.

Upon graduating from BU Law in 1980, Baron wasn’t sure he wanted to be a trial lawyer, and took a position as a policy analyst at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He eventually transitioned into an attorney position for HHS, where he worked on several class action lawsuits, and was laterally hired by the Department of Justice (DOJ), working as a trial lawyer and later as a senior counsel. For the DOJ, Baron worked on a series of class action lawsuits, which is where his experience with government and legal archiving began.

While working with the DOJ in 1992, Baron’s then-supervisor Elizabeth Pugh asked him to take the lead on an ongoing lawsuit, speculating that it would not amount to much work and would inevitably be dismissed upon appeal. The case, however, turned out to be the seminal Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President, involving the preservation of backup tapes containing incriminating Iran-Contra affair emails that National Security Council staffer Oliver North thought he had deleted. It stayed in the courts for the better part of a decade.

“[Pugh’s] ‘hoodwinking’ me ended up with my spending 10,000 hours on successive lawsuits concerning White House email, and was the start of nearly 20 years of my continuously attending to the subject of preserving electronic records as a whole,” explains Baron.

After representing the Archivist of the United States in these lawsuits as DOJ counsel of record, and following a sabbatical to teach cyberspace law as a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia, Baron became NARA's first Director of Litigation in 2000. Due to a growing legal demand for easy access to official government documents, NARA often has interests in dozens of cases at a time.

“In many instances another agency is being sued over issues that in some way touch upon the recordkeeping practices of the agency under the Federal Records Act of 1950,” explains Baron. “Sometimes NARA gets involved in finding records in lawsuits brought by or against the United States.”

In the case of the ongoing U.S. v. Philip Morris RICO lawsuit, Baron led a team of 25 lawyers and archivists in a quest through over 20 million Clinton administration emails, and produced 100,000 relevant messages in response to over 1,700 document requests from the defense attorneys.

Jason R. Baron ('80) gives his acceptance speech at NARA

“This early experience at NARA led to what my colleagues in the e-discovery world have heard me describe as my personal Grail Quest, in attempting to educate the legal profession about more advanced, more efficient ways lawyers can search through vast collections of electronically stored information,” Baron explained.

Such advocacy for e-discovery has earned Baron numerous Archivist’s Special Achievement Awards, and a Federal 100 Award in 2008, in addition to his 2011 Emmett Leahy Award.

Baron is currently an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies, where in 2009 he co-taught the first e-discovery graduate course for PhD. and Masters candidates in the United States.

In addition, Baron offers advice to law students considering his field: “Every law student who thinks they may be practicing litigation in state or federal court needs to confront the fact that a host of challenging e-discovery issues awaits them. A whole new field of ‘information governance’ is emerging that some students may find exciting to delve into.”

Baron reminisces fondly over his time at BU Law, and maintains that the confidence he acquired as a member of the National Moot Court team helped later in his career as a trial and occasional appellate lawyer.

As an alumnus, Baron has been a vocal proponent of BU Law students considering a public service career. “I have never had a dull day as a litigating attorney in the federal government, and would be happy to mentor any student who is thinking about a career in Washington,” he explains.

Baron’s passion for his field, exemplified most recently by his Emmett Leahy Award, makes him a strong asset to the BU Law community, and to the American legal community as a whole.

Reported by Joe Mielenhausen

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