Discovery Issues Associated with AI Scribe Audio and Audit Trails

Matthew P. Keris, Shareholder; Chair, EMR and Audit Trail Practice Group | Marshall Dennehey

Matthew P. Keris chairs Marshall Dennehey’s national EMR and Audit Trail Practice Group and is a recognized authority on electronic medical records in litigation, including audit trail preservation, discovery, and the integration of artificial intelligence into clinical documentation. He is the author of Electronic Medical Records and Litigation (Thomson Reuters Legal, 2014) and has defended health care providers and businesses in complex civil litigation for more than twenty years.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Keris earned his J.D. from Roger Williams University School of Law in 1996 and his B.A., cum laude, from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania in 1993. He is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania (1996), New York (2011), and Connecticut (2021), before the U.S. District Courts for the Middle District of Pennsylvania (2000) and the Northern District of New York (2020), and before the U.S. Supreme Court (2023). He is also an Mcare-approved mediator.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Keris has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America for Medical Malpractice Law – Defendants and Litigation – Health Care and holds Martindale-Hubbell’s AV Preeminent rating. He is a past president of both the DRI Foundation and the Pennsylvania Defense Institute, has served multiple terms as President of the Pennsylvania Association for Health Care Risk Management, and currently serves as editor of Patient Safety.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Keris serves on the Healthcare Standards Institute Workgroup on AI Governance Standards and is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management and the Pennsylvania Bar Association Health Care Law Committee. He has also provided commentary to NBC News, Thomson Reuters, Law360, The Legal Intelligencer, and Becker’s Hospital Review.

• Experience

Mr. Keris speaks frequently on the discovery issues at the center of this program, with recent presentations including “Anticipated AI Discovery Issues in Litigation” (2026), “The Role of AI and EMRs in Discovery” (2025), and “Audit Trail 101” before the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas (2025). He has also published extensively on artificial intelligence, electronic medical records, and medical negligence in The Legal Intelligencer and the Journal of Healthcare Risk Management. His trial work includes a defense verdict in a long-term care case involving spoliation issues and the first Pennsylvania civil jury trial taken to verdict during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Julie Ritzman, MBA, CPHRM, Senior Vice President of Patient Safety and Risk Management | The Doctors Company

Julie Ritzman is Senior Vice President of Patient Safety and Risk Management at The Doctors Company, where her work centers on medical professional liability, patient safety, and health care risk management — the operational side of the clinical documentation, records, and retention practices at issue when claims arise. She previously served as the company’s Vice President of Patient Safety and Risk Management for Region I (2019–2025).

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Ritzman holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of South Dakota and is a Certified Professional in Health Care Risk Management (CPHRM). Her credentials are grounded in more than two decades of hands-on health care risk management practice, spanning frontline risk manager roles inside large health systems, executive leadership at a medical professional liability insurer, and national responsibility for patient safety and risk management operations at The Doctors Company  the same claims, documentation, and records-retention environment this program examines from the plaintiff’s side.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. Ritzman serves as Section Chair of the Medical Professional Liability Association Risk Management Committee, following several years of service on that committee. At The Doctors Company, she advanced from Vice President of Patient Safety and Risk Management for Region I to the company’s national senior vice president role, in which she leads a full-time, in-house team of more than 25 patient safety and risk management professionals serving all 50 states and the District of Columbia — every one holding the CPHRM designation and at least ten years of experience — with Patient Safety Centers of Excellence spanning more than 20 specialties.

• Professional Involvement

Her professional involvement centers on the Medical Professional Liability Association, where she has served on the Risk Management Committee for several years and currently holds the Section Chair role. She is also a national voice for The Doctors Company’s claims-driven patient safety work, serving as a company spokesperson for its 2026 monthly Malpractice Risk Review series, which analyzes real malpractice claims data specialty by specialty to give clinicians actionable insights for strengthening communication, decision making, and overall patient care.

• Experience

Before joining The Doctors Company, Ms. Ritzman was Vice President of Risk Management Services at the Mutual Insurance Company of Arizona (MICA) from 2014 to 2019. She spent 15 years as a risk manager within large health systems, including Dignity and Sanford Health, giving her an inside view of how health systems manage patient safety events, claims exposure, and the records that document them.

SESSION 1 – Pre-Suit Access Requests and Why the Deposition Comes Before the Motion | 2:30pm – 3:30pm ET

This session equips plaintiff attorneys with a sequenced, pre-suit strategy for obtaining AI scribe audio recordings and audit trails before automatic deletion windows close. Attendees will learn how to deploy the HIPAA right of access, preservation letters, and Rule 27 depositions to perpetuate testimony before litigation begins — and before evidence vanishes. Attorneys will leave with a working framework for identifying what AI scribe data exists, how to demand it, and how to structure a pre-suit deposition targeting vendor IT custodians when deletion is imminent.

BREAK | 3:30pm – 3:40pm ET

SESSION 2 – Impeaching the Note with the Audio and Moving When the Audio Is Gone | 3:40pm – 4:40pm ET

This session equips plaintiff attorneys with a concrete framework for using AI scribe audio recordings to impeach AI-generated clinical notes at deposition and trial, and for pursuing spoliation sanctions when those recordings have been deleted. Attendees will learn how to identify and exploit the attestation gap between what was spoken and what the AI-signed note says, how to structure a FRCP 37(e) motion or state-law adverse inference argument when audio has been destroyed, and how to fight the health system’s attempt to classify audio as a non-record transitory communication. By the end of this session, attorneys will be able to build a preservation-to-spoliation timeline, cross-examine on hallucination, and move for sanctions with the right evidentiary foundation.