eDiscovery Leaders Live: Joe Martinez of ETRM Group
Joe Martinez, Chief Technology Officer at ETRM Group, joins George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal, for ACEDS #eDiscoveryLeadersLive at the Georgetown Advanced eDiscovery Institute.
An expert computer forensic examiner and instructor with over 20 years of experience in investigations and data management ranging from civil litigation support to Federal level counter-espionage operations and investigations, Joe has performed or overseen thousands of investigations in criminal and civil matters. With military, software and service provider, and law firm experience, Joe joined ETRM Group in February 2022 as their Chief Technology Officer.
Joe shared the path he took from the military to eDiscovery, talked about his currently role at EDRM Group, and discussed that group’s originals, evolution, and expansion. He emphasized the important on putting client service first and foremost and walked through how he applied a forensics approach to his job. Joe examined what he sees as some of the biggest challenges facing eDiscovery today – especially commoditization and ROT – and how his group takes those own. Joe closed with a description of his ideal eDiscovery worlds and some words of wisdom to the attendees of the Georgetown conference as well as everyone else involved in eDiscovery.
Key Highlights
- [1:38] Introducing Joe.
- [1:51] How Joe got into eDiscovery, from forensics in the military to the commercial space.
- [4:52] Joe’s current role at ETRM Group.
- [5:18] The expansion and evolution of ETRM Group.
- [5:50] The importance of maintaining a customer service centric feel.
- [6:47] How to maintain that focus on the client.
- [8:20] Handling the logistics needed to deliver focus on the client.
- [9:05] Applying a forensics approach to the organization and management of data.
- [10:48] ETRM Group’s origins and the needs they address.
- [12:36] Serving law firm clients.
- [13:52] Serving governmental clients.
- [14:31] Commoditization of services and how EDTR Group response to that.
- [16:12] eDiscovery software differentiators.
- [16:42] The misuse of cloud and the ROT it leads to.
- [18:23] How they help people address ROT.
- [19:30] Dealing with what data to delete and what to keep.
- [21:45] His ideal eDiscovery world.
- [25:29] Reflections on the Georgetown Advanced eDiscovery Institute after day one.
- [26:35] The messages he would offer to the conference audience, were he to get the chance.
Key Quotes
- “We’re basically becoming one large family that’s addressing all the different aspects of eDiscovery … and bringing that customer service centric feel that’s kind of been lost in the big vendor shuffle of the last 2010’s.”
- “There are very few differentiators [for eDiscovery service providers] so having project [and] technical management staff that always keep the client, their needs, and their requests … at the forefront of anything, it goes a long way.”
- “Taking a forensic approach to the organization and management of data, especially when it comes to eDiscovery and litigation, really is paramount to be able to speak to where your data are at any given time, where it came from, the validity of the data, and ensuring that nothing happened to that data along the way.”
- “A lot of things have become commoditized [in the eDiscovery market] but what’s not is technical acumen and experience and the ability to show customers both law firm and corporate where they can save cost, show them were they’re already doing things that they may not need to reach outside for, bring that level of skill set inhouse either on a virtual or parttime basis or fulltime basis, and show them how to rinse and repeat that so they have an actionable process that they could use moving forward.”