BDO's Legal Tech Talk Podcast

In addition to being a legal champion and change ambassador, Nicole advises corporations and attorneys on e-discovery best practices, process improvement methodologies, and change management. With a focus on cultivating deep relationships with her legal team globally, Nicole actively engages in training and education to help attorneys understand the power of legal technology and identify problems that it can help solve. She successfully pivoted to virtual education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nicole promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion within the legal industry. She also emphasizes the importance of managing stress. She recommends the American Bar Association’s Lawyer Assistance Program as a resource.

Key Takeaways:

• Legal technology empowers lawyers to shine and helps them solve complex problems.
• Throughout her career, Nicole has implemented multiple initiatives which allow attorneys to focus on practicing law while removing administrative burdens and saving clients’ money.
• She has created technology-based solutions for law firms, corporations, in-house counsel, and non-profit organizations which continue to develop organically with enhancements as needs reveal themselves over time.
• Well-developed people skills lead to consistent success when building and maintaining client relationships, consulting on emerging technologies, and advising on innovative solutions.
• The biggest change in legal technology Nicole has seen in the last 25 years is diversity and inclusion. She says the industry is not where it needs to be, but it is a lot better than it was.

Joan develops leads technology initiatives for the firm. Her duties include producing and implementing technology policies, setting and managing technology budgets, and approving technology contracts and agreements, in addition to overseeing all aspects of the firm's information technology.

Key Takeaways:

• We need to understand generative AI better. We need to figure out the use cases where AI can be helpful. What it looks like in five years will be very different than what it is today.
• AI can help with research. It can help with deposition preparation. Some new AI solutions can help with summarization and comparisons, which can potentially provide value.
• We need to educate the legal workforce to make good decisions about AI. The workforce also needs to understand algorithms so that they can be used effectively.
• Technology should be used to do administrative and repetitive tasks so that legal professionals can do the higher-value, strategic work.
• Collaborative tools have helped speed up the pace of business, and it has continued to increase over the last few years with the pandemic.
• Young lawyers and client requirements are driving law firms to use more legal technology. Clients want to collaborate and share content more interactively than in the past.

Rachi co-founded Altorney in 2022 with his brother Shimmy Messing. Previously, he worked as a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft in the Corporate, External, & Legal Affairs department. In that role, he managed and promoted the use of advanced technology solutions for the eDiscovery team.

Key Takeaways:

• Altorney has a two-sided rating system to accurately match up clients with reviewers.
• Rachi hopes to raise wages for document reviewers and help them make informed decisions through transparency.
• One of the goals of Altorney is to automate the document review process as much as possible by using generative A.I. to help cull data and understand it.
• Rachi says generative A.I. will reduce the number of document reviewers on cases, but they will still be needed in an industry that is growing.

Chris consults with attorneys and clients on information governance, data privacy, cyber security, data migration, litigation readiness, eDiscovery and leveraging advanced technology to improve efficiencies in legal operations. Chris manages eMerge’s technology team and technology infrastructure. He has over 20 years of experience in the legal technology industry serving in a variety of roles within law firms and technology service providers.

Key Takeaways

Constant learning and problem solving are key skills for success in legal technology.

Generative A.I. is going to revolutionize the legal industry over the next few years. A.I. can help take repeatable tasks, make them less error prone, and let humans do higher-level thinking.

In 2022, eMerge Xtractor won the Relativity Fest Innovation Award for Best Innovation: Enterprise.

Chris and his team work on all types of legal matters but focus primarily on litigation and e-discovery. The goal of the team and eMerge is to make legal services more efficient and effective by combining legal strategy with technology.

Wendy is a frequent speaker and serves as a part-time instructor for an undergraduate business course offered by Penn State University’s World Campus on the topic of the social, legal and ethical environment of business. She has experience in eDiscovery and digital forensics in a wide array of workplace litigation matters, including harassment and discrimination defense, ADA claims, restrictive covenant and trade secrets matters, and other employment litigation.

Wendy wrote the article WhatsApp Messages May Be Gone But Never Forgotten – At Least Not By the DOJ: Your Company’s 6-Step Action Plan | Fisher Phillips.

She describes a six-step action plan for organizations:

1. Audit current authorized applications

2. Research technology solutions

3. Implement policies

4. Comply with record-keeping obligations

5. Train employees

6. Monitor and enforce employee compliance

Key Takeaways:

The pandemic led to the use of more workplace collaboration tools, which make E-discovery more difficult by expanding the volume and increasing the places data can be stored.

Ephemeral messing apps make it harder to preserve and govern data generated by employees. If employers don’t provide tools that employees need, they will find their own, but consumer-level products do not provide the same controls as enterprise versions.

Organizations should develop a robust Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) compliance program.

The U.S. Department of Justice released the Monaco Memo that outlined the need for:

• Effective policies about using personal devices and third-party messaging applications for work;
• Employee training on these policies; and

• Enforcement of policy violations.

Jessica worked for IBM for many years managing its litigation support department. She specializes in e-discovery, data retention, information governance, workflow improvement, and document processing. You can find her on LinkedIn.

She wrote the book Yet I Rise: The True Story of a Young Woman's Journey to Succeed Despite All Evils.

Key Takeaways

As a legal operations manager, Jessica manages data retention, e-discovery, cybersecurity, trust, compliance, investigations, and risk.

Legal operations departments have more technology today, but they also have larger data volumes and fewer workers, adding to the day-to-day stress level and pressure to perform quickly.

A myriad of laws and regulations is making the field of legal operations increasingly complex.

Legal operations professionals are seeking ways to deal with the overwhelming number of decisions they must make on a daily basis.

Jessica manages stressful days at work by getting up early to mentally prepare.

Sonya specializes in the areas of in-house legal/litigation practices and procedures, management of core-team efforts to implement policies, procedures and tools helping to mitigate risks associated with the preservation and production of electronically stored information thereby ensuring compliance with federal and state laws and regulations.

Sonya is on the board of the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS).

Key Takeaways

T-Mobile has created processes, workflows, and classification systems to deal with large amounts of employee and customer data in a highly regulated industry. Internally, about 4 million Slack messages and more than half a million emails are sent daily. The average employee has 50-100 gigabytes of email data. Sonja says it’s important to educate employees to make sure they understand their data is discoverable.

Privacy is also a major part of handling data. Sonja says it is essential to conduct regular audits and trainings to assess needs and update access to information.

One of the most difficult problems with data in the telecommunications industry is dealing with name changes and aliases. It can be hard to verify an identity.

Madelaine Lane and Scott Carvo are partners and litigators at Warner Norcross & Judd, a corporate law firm in Michigan. In this episode of BDO’s Legal Tech Talk podcast, they discuss the need to collaborate with clients and cooperate with opposing counsel in e-discovery to build trust and reach a fair outcome at the lowest cost.

Hosts Jared Crafton, BDO’s Forensic Technology Practice Leader, and Daniel Gold, BDO’s Managing Director of the Enterprise E-Discovery Managed Services practice, lead the discussion.

Key Takeaways:

• Scott says it’s important to have conversations with clients to align your goals and understand the sources of data to be collected in a case. It’s also important to reach out to opposing counsel at the beginning. Being proactive is as necessary as being reactive in e-discovery.
• Madelaine says civil litigators are leading the way in embracing legal technology, and the criminal bar is making strides dealing with large amounts of data, especially in major investigations.
• Scott says the parties involved in a case are much better equipped to arrive at a resolution than judges on the bench because they know the technology and data sources.
• Collaboration and cooperation are needed to build trust. The proliferation of data due to the increasing number of internet-connected devices is making collaboration more important than ever to keep costs down. Ninety percent of cases settle out of court, and it’s in the best interest of both parties to work together for a faster and fair resolution.
• The proliferation of data is making e-discovery increasingly more time consuming and expensive. Legal professionals are seeking ways to deal with the overwhelming amount of data they handle in litigation.
• Legal professionals are moving away from the framework of adversaries, demands, and opposition and moving towards regarding each other as counselors and advisors.

Korein Tillery is one of the country’s leading plaintiffs’ complex-litigation firms, where Stephanie leverages more than 15 years of experience in finance, consulting, and data analytics to manage large litigation projects, as well as the firm’s e-Discovery platform. She won Relativity’s Innovation Award for Stellar Women in E-Discovery in 2019.

Discussion topics include:

• Dealing with technical production issues and disputes
• Agreeing to production formats in a protocol or informally
• Finding out what you don’t know and reaching out to others in the industry
• Automating basic steps in the discovery process, developing workflows and teaching others
• Incorporating generative AI into e-discovery

David Horrigan, Relativity’s Discovery Counsel and Legal Education Director, has predictions for E-Discovery in 2023. David is an attorney, award-winning journalist, law school guest lecturer, and former E-Discovery industry analyst. He has served as counsel at the Entertainment Software Association, reporter and assistant editor at The National Law Journal, and analyst and counsel at 451 Research.

In this episode of BDO’s Legal Tech Talk Podcast, David talks about artificial intelligence, sanctions, and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure with hosts Jared Crafton, BDO’s Forensic Technology Practice Leader, and Daniel Gold, BDO’s Managing Director of the Enterprise E-Discovery Managed Services practice.

Key Takeaways

• The explosion of data in E-Discovery is making A.I. integration necessary.
• In the Relativity Blog, David wrote The Top Trends Dominating e-Disclosure in 2023.
• David is a frequent contributor to Legaltech News, and his articles have appeared in The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, and The New York Law Journal.