\r\n\r\nTo enable litigation support and electronic discovery professionals to better understand the benefits of participating in EDRM and the resources that it provides, EDRM, in co-operation with its education partner, eDiscovery Daily, has begun to profile some of its participant members. These profiles are designed to illustrate how participants and their organizations contribute to the success of EDRM as well as how those organizations use EDRM resources in their own businesses. If you are a participant of EDRM and would like to be profiled (or would like to recommend a current EDRM participant to be profiled), please contact George Socha (george@edrm.net) or Tom Gelbmann (tom@edrm.net) to arrange a profile interview with Doug Austin, Editor of eDiscovery Daily.\r\n\r\nToday’s EDRM Participant Profile Interview is with Seth Magaw. Seth currently serves Ricoh Americas Corporation as Director of eDiscovery Client Services within Ricoh Legal. He is responsible for the development and implementation of service delivery for Ricoh’s electronic discovery hosting services and enhancing the organization’s overall standing in the litigation support industry. During Seth’s ten years at Ricoh, he has handled many eDiscovery projects, including large forensic collections, ESI and hosting projects. Prior to his current role, Seth has also served Ricoh Legal as Regional Digital Support Project Manager and Digital Sales Analyst.\r\n\r\nSeth has been a recipient of Ricoh’s Circle of Excellence Award. He has also spoken as a subject matter expert at many eDiscovery events, which include: Massachusetts Paralegal Association, University of New Orleans Paralegal Program, ILTA Statewide Meeting for Ohio Litigation Support Professionals, and Technology in Practice Conference in Toronto, CA. Seth earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Leadership from Northeastern University and is an active member in both EDRM and ACEDS.\r\n\r\nAbout Ricoh\r\n\r\nRicoh is a global technology and services company focused on helping organizations capture, transform and manage information from anywhere, at anytime, in today’s dynamic work environment. Ricoh does this through professional, managed and IT service offerings, office imaging equipment, production print solutions, document management systems and unified communications solutions. Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in approximately 200 countries and regions.\r\n\r\nRicoh has been a powerful partner to the legal community for more than two decades, earning the trust of clients through experience, expertise and long-term relationships. Ricoh is committed to providing premier eDiscovery solutions in support of our customers’ ever changing needs and requirements.\r\n\r\nDoug: Tell me about your background and experiences before joining Ricoh.\r\n\r\nSeth: I spent the first five years of my career in litigation support as a civil litigation paralegal, assisting with all aspects of civil litigation, including drafting motions and pleadings, preparing document discovery requests, and trial preparation. I worked on insurance defense and corporate civil defense cases. That was my first experience in litigation support and we were using Summation version 5.21. At that time, we were doing a lot of scanning and coding and using Summation to find documents quickly and manage them in preparation for use in depositions, trials and other proceedings.\r\n\r\nDoug: When did you join Ricoh?\r\n\r\nSeth: I joined Ricoh in 2004 and have been with the company approximately eleven years, although I worked with them as a client at a law firm first.\r\n\r\nDoug: And, when did you become Director of eDiscovery Client Services?\r\n\r\nSeth: I was recently promoted to my current position. Prior to that, I was a Regional Manager, a Senior Project Manager and also a Digital Sales Analyst and have been focused in litigation support for the entire time I’ve been with Ricoh.\r\n\r\nDoug: How long has Ricoh participated in EDRM?\r\n\r\nSeth: Ricoh has had individuals that have been active and participating in EDRM for years. I have been involved in EDRM for about three years. As an organization, Ricoh formally joined last year.\r\n\r\nDoug: Can you tell me about some of the instances where you have participated in EDRM projects? \r\n\r\nSeth: I recently worked on the team that rolled out Release 2 of the Statistical Sampling Applied to Electronic Discovery guide back in February. I’ve also participated on the Search team (which eventually split into separate projects, such as the statistical sampling project that I worked on). Currently, I’m working on the Information Governance Reference Model (IGRM) team and worked with that group in the most recent meeting back in May.\r\n\r\nI’ve also been discussing ideas for a new project or effort with George Socha, focused on the Review area of the EDRM model and potentially creating materials and best practices to complement that section of the framework.\r\n\r\nDoug: Can you tell me about some of the instances where Ricoh has applied EDRM models and standards within your organization?\r\n\r\nSeth: Ricoh uses a lot of EDRM resources, if not all of them. EDRM is more than just a model; there are so many resources within the EDRM program. We use it a lot for both our Sales side and our Operations side. For example, the EDRM model is a core component of our training for new team members. Everything from Information Governance through Preservation and Collection to Review, Production and Presentation demonstrates litigation support fundamentals and best practices. The EDRM also provides access to many resources that complement our training and illustrate to our employees where our services fit within the framework. So, like many other organizations, we’ve used those resources for years.\r\n\r\nOne area where we’ve used EDRM resources specifically, is in providing cost predictability and cost containment to our clients through its Budget Calculators. Clients want to know what to anticipate eDiscovery costs will be with reasonable certainty and the calculators are useful in helping us establish that understanding with them.\r\n\r\nAlso, at Ricoh, we’re constantly looking to innovate using new technology, and we use the EDRM Data Sets to assist with quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC), not only for our technology validation but also for workflows. For example, Ricoh Legal’s Advanced Solutions team uses the data sets for everything from forensics projects to processing and hosting in all three of our hosted platform offerings. So, we’re using those data sets throughout the process to validate our best practices and methodologies.\r\n\r\nAnother resource that has been useful to us at Ricoh has been the Computer Assisted Review Reference Model (CARRM) model. While we don’t reference the CARRM model in its entirety, we do use several of its components.. We have numerous projects that utilize assisted review and analytics technology and the model enables us to provide these services to our clients effectively and defensibly.\r\n\r\nWe use EDRM documentation, such as the Statistical Sampling and the EDRM Search Guide to ensure we’re properly discussing with clients key concepts, including recall and precision. In general, we use all of the Search resources quite extensively to create best practices and workflows for the hosting support team.\r\n\r\nI think the EDRM framework and model has created a great platform, giving service providers and other organizations a terrific framework from which to work. As a service provider, we’re brought into specific situations where the client requests for us to host their data inside one of our hosting platforms: Relativity, Catalyst or Xera. However, our real value is the counsel we’re able to provide by asking questions – fueled by the EDRM framework – about how the data was preserved, collected and will be utilized in the future.\r\n\r\nAt Ricoh, we don’t want to just put the data on a hosting site, we want to understand more about the case and what the client is trying to accomplish. The EDRM framework is an excellent resource in this context, which enables us to communicate effectively and efficiently to the client.\r\n\r\nDoug: Are there any specific lessons learned or advice that you would give to others working with EDRM resources or considering participation in EDRM?\r\n\r\nSeth: With regard to EDRM, I have been in litigation support for approximately 14 years and have been impressed by the resources provided by George and Tom. And, as I have now participated in EDRM groups for a while and attended the bi-annual meetings and participated in the monthly calls, I have found that participating in EDRM is about working together for the betterment of litigation support as a whole. It is so refreshing to see how all the vendors not only work together for the common goal of improving litigation support, but also that they approach it with the same enthusiasm and passion that I have. It’s a comfortable environment where everyone is encouraged to speak their minds and not intimidating at all for those who are participating for the first time.\r\n\r\nAnd, I can’t say this enough: there is a ton of information available on the EDRM site. As I dig into it further, I have found even more useful information. So, if it has been a while since you really took a deep look into the EDRM site, take a look again. Now that Ricoh is an organizational member, we expect to be an even more engaged and active member of EDRM. We have participants throughout Ricoh, including our Governance, Regulations and Compliance group, Ricoh Forensics, processing engineers and project management team. Their backgrounds include team members with formal legal education, including paralegals and attorneys and litigation support technical staff. It doesn’t matter what your background is, it’s really about how much you want to learn and to be a part of something bigger. It’s about jumping in with both feet, and I think the biggest thing that I learned is that the EDRM membership group is so embracing and very interested in other points of view. That was very refreshing and exciting for me and is one of the reasons that I continue to enjoy participating in EDRM.
