eDiscovery Leaders Live: Mollie Nichols of Redgrave Data
Millie Nichols, Chief Executive Officer at Redgrave Data, joins George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal, for ACEDS #eDiscoveryLeadersLive.
Mollie is the CEO of the newly formed Redgrave Strategic Data Solutions, LLC, an affiliated company of majority owner Redgrave LLP. Mollie guides a team of legal, technology, data professionals to produce data driven solutions that efficiently manage and analyze litigation, compliance, and deal data. In addition to driving strategic relationships with Redgrave LLP, clients, and service providers, she oversees development of the team’s approach to the search and analysis of client data in matters using advanced technologies, including machine learning, data visualization, and advanced analytics. Mollie has more than 35 years of experience as a litigator, as a law professor, and in law firm management. She tried more than 25 cases as lead counsel and was recognized in the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Special Report as one of five innovators driving radical change in law firms.
Key Highlights
- [2:44] How Mollie got into eDiscovery in the first place, starting in the 1980’s.
- [5:29] The launch of Redgrave Data: an opportunity that could not be passed up.
- [7:08] Attracting the dream team.
- [7:38] Dream team members Dave Lewis, Mark Noel, Lindsey Worth, and Scott Culbertson and what they bring to bear.
- [10:29] Tool agnostic but with an affinity for Reveal.
- [11:22] Expanding the team.
- [12:18] Stellar credentials, deep legal experience, deep technical experience – and passion.
- [13:29] The deepening academic credentials of eDiscovery practitioners.
- [15:53] Adopting and adapting tools and processes for the legal profession.
- [17:09] How behind the times are lawyers with technology?
- [19:18] Offering the ability to testify.
- [19:50] What makes Redgrave Data a better option: custom solutions, testimony, independence.
- [21:38] More growth anticipated.
- [22:32] Global reach.
- [23:42] Not just tackling litigation: the value of a clean house.
- [25:43] What the future portends: a growing toolkit, a science-driven focus on TAR, custom solutions.
- [27:55] Looking at the competitive landscape: filling a gap in the market.
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- “Building a group to be able to tackle the technology challenges that clients have and to deal with the TAR issue – the black box issue – and to deal with the cost of eDiscovery and push that down, it was an opportunity I could not pass up.”
- “I was able to attract the dream team. I have a team of experts who joined me, who will help build those custom solutions for our clients and be able to open that black box and use science and math and statistics to be validate TAR processes and also to provide that testimony.”
- “We have a project coming in that’s and RPA project – robotic process automation – and with that project we’re going to be able to build a bot that will save the client tens of thousands of dollars because normally you would have a person doing what this bot we’re building is going to do.”
- “Clients are not happy if there is an obvious way to automate a process yet you do it manually – looking at documents or a repetitive task that is just asking to be automated. Clients are not happy with that and they are pushing back. They want this type of technology.”
- “There’s really this intersection between litigation, information governance, cybersecurity, but it starts with that information governance piece. If you tackle a piece of technology as you’re onboarding it within an organization to understand what the data points are what policy and process you can put around that piece of technology, it will pay dividends for you when you get to litigation, if you have a cybersecurity incident.”