Legal Operations

An Introduction To Legal Operations

There’s a lot going on in legal operations right now, and our newest columnist wants to help spread the word.

By Mike Quartararo  
on

Mike Quartararo

Ed. note: Please welcome our newest columnist, Mike Quartararo, a former law firm director, well-known legal technologist, an author, educator, a veteran of the legal industry, and now the managing director of his own consultancy, eDPM Advisory Services. He will be writing about legal operations.

I applied to write for ATL on a whim. I honestly did not expect that just three weeks later an editor would contact me and ask that I join the team. It doesn’t pay much, if I’m being honest. But since I’m trying to launch a new company, I thought it might be good exposure for me. The good news is that I like to write. There’s something about crafting a sentence and then a paragraph and getting the words on the page to exactly convey what I’m trying to say. It doesn’t always work out that way, of course, but we do our best.

A little about me. I have spent the last 20 years working in Biglaw, first at Skadden Arps, where early on as a paralegal and then as a database specialist/project manager, I helped lawyers manage large-scale class-action and securities litigation and investigations. In the early 2000s, I caught the technology bug during one of the largest securities litigations in history, mostly because I was forced to find more cost-effective and efficient ways to manage massive amounts of data in discovery. It was not long before I obtained my project management professional (PMP) certification.

More recently, I ran litigation support operations at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. As their director of litigation support services, I developed and implemented firm-wide policy related to electronic discovery and litigation support services and provided consultative services to the firm and its clients.

In the middle of all this, I began teaching at a small online school named Bryan University. The school approached me to help design a graduate-level eDiscovery project management curriculum. And design it we did. Within two years, the program was up and running, including a project management simulation lab that incorporated practical use of leading eDiscovery platforms. Much of that program has now been folded into the schools growing paralegal program.

During this time, I was also asked to help design an eDiscovery certification exam, which led me to sit on the national advisory board of the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS). I am also the ACEDS liaison member to the advisory committee of the Duke-Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) at Duke Law School.

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And finally, in 2016, I wrote a book. Project Management in Electronic Discovery is the only book written for the legal industry that merges the principles of traditional project management with the best practices in eDiscovery. In truth, I was inspired to write the book because as we began to develop the curriculum at Bryan University it became clear that there was no single book that could be used to teach eDiscovery project management. But the fact is that most of the thousands of copies of the book in print and digital versions went not to students, but to lawyers, paralegals, and legal technology professionals across the legal industry.

And so here I am. A recently departed somewhat disgruntled but well-intentioned and genuine former law firm director who has been asked to write a column about legal operations. What gives me the right?

Well, I’ve been around the legal business and the law firm life for nearly all of my career. For over two decades, I’ve worked extensively with lawyers and closely with their clients, most of which are global corporations. I’ve learned more than a thing or two about law firm operations and legal operations within a corporate legal department are not unfamiliar to me at all. So, yeah, I’m confident I can do this.

My goal here is to inform and educate. There’s a lot going on in legal operations right now, and one thing I want to do is spread the word. Obviously, I have a bias towards technology and project management. But clearly these are things that legal operations professionals everywhere should be embracing. So, I hope to flavor my writing here with technology and project management sprinkles. But what I really want to do — what I’ve enjoyed doing for all of my career — is continue to solve problems. If you have an issue or observation, send it to me. If I don’t have the answer, I’m really good at finding someone who does.

And feel free to send comments or questions to me at mquartararo@edpmadvisory.com. If you have suggestions or ideas for topics, those are most welcome too.

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Mike Quartararo is the managing director of eDPM Advisory Services, a consulting firm providing e-discovery, project management and legal technology advisory and training services to the legal industry. He is also the author of the 2016 book Project Management in Electronic Discovery. Mike has many years of experience delivering e-discovery, project management and legal technology solutions to law firms and Fortune 500 corporations across the globe and is widely considered an expert on project management, e-discovery and legal matter management. You can reach him via email at mquartararo@edpmadvisory.com.

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