James C. Francis, IV
US Magistrate Judge (Ret.)
Mediator, Arbitrator, Special Master
Biography
James Francis 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, Civil Procedure, Evidence, Federal Courts, and Constitutional Torts. From 1985 until 2017, he served as a United States Magistrate Judge in the Southern District of New York. Judge Francis received his B.A. from Yale College in 1974, his juris doctor degree from the Yale Law School in 1978, and a master’s degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, also in 1978.
For more than a decade, Judge Francis taught Constitutional Torts as an Adjunct Professor at the Fordham University School of Law. He has authored more than a dozen court opinions and articles on electronic data. He speaks frequently on electronic discovery and is a 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 Board of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM).
Courses
A Proposed TAR Framework