Two weeks ago, at the culmination of InHouse, the summit for "leaders who GSD," Logikcull announced the winners of its first-ever Culler Awards. The Culler awards highlight the individuals and organizations who not only "get stuff done," but who set the bar for discovery excellence, innovation, impact.
These are organizations who are changing the way eDiscovery is handled, who are bringing new and innovative approaches to their practice, and who are making unmistakable impacts on the world, from helping protect children from abuse and exploitation to fighting global warming all the way to the Supreme Court. We couldn't be happier to celebrate their achievements and couldn't be prouder to have been even a small part of the inspiring work they are doing.
Read on for the nominees and winners or watch the entire ceremony below. (Stick around 'till the end for a truly moving Discovery Impact Award.)
Discovery Excellence Award
For customers who are creating best practices for discovery workflows or approaches.
Nominees:
- Kyle Kelly, Sr. eDiscovery and Litigation Support Specialist, Coinbase
- Katie Lynch, Director of Legal Support, Veolia North America
- Amy Sellars, Assistant General Counsel and Director of the eDiscovery Center of Excellence, Cardinal North America
Kyle Kelly, Coinbase: Kyle is a senior eDiscovery support specialist who took it upon himself to build Coinbase's discovery function from scratch. He was among the first to put our then-new Slack eDiscovery integration to the test in a regulatory matter that culled down more than 8.5 million Slack messages to fewer than 41,000 in a matter of days. Additionally, at Coinbase, Kyle and his team have been pioneering in the way they approach data security and, particularly, the way they measure security from an ROI perspective.
Katie Lynch, Veolia: When it comes to bringing eDiscovery in-house, Katie and her team at Veolia have been leading the way for nearly 15 years, embodying the philosophy of doing "more with less" by leveraging powerfully simple DIY technology to handle massive matters with a lean, agile team—handling terabyte-sized matters with a team of one. Katie and her team have also been pioneering in the way they use Logikcull to bring more visibility, uniformity, and security to the discovery process, from mandating that outside counsel use Logikcull for their discovery work to demonstrating ROI with Logikcull's built-in reporting abilities.
Amy Sellars, Cardinal Health: Throughout her career, Amy Sellars has transformed eDiscovery at three different organizations, the Williams Companies, Walmart, and Cardinal Health. Her concept of "Logikcull as the gateway drug"—that is, of always keeping discovery powerfully simple for your teams and partners—has been instrumental to how we think of empowering users of all levels of technical expertise. With simplicity as her north star, Amy helps bring clarity, ease, and excellence to a process that can so often be overly complicated, excessively risky, and unjustifiably expensive.
Winner, Discovery Excellence: Katie Lynch, Veolia
When Katie and her team decided to take eDiscovery work in house in 2006, they were decidedly bucking the trends. In the years that have followed, they have developed significant internal expertise, forged best practices for corporate legal departments, and pioneered an approach that is increasingly becoming the norm among in-house legal teams. Katie and her team's successes have set a precedent for other users and become a model for taking control of your eDiscovery process.
Discovery Innovation Award
For customers who are pursuing unique or creative use cases, or finding new ways to use Logikcull for discovery.
Nominees:
- Clinton Sanko, Shareholder, and Anthony Mendenhall, Director of eDiscovery Operations, Baker Donelson
- Lindsay Kolar, Corporate Paralegal, Gordon Food Services
- Julie Richer, Legal Operations & Discovery Manager, and Amanda Kerlee, Legal Administrator, American Electric Power
Clinton Sanko and Anthony Mendenhall, Baker Donelson: Clinton and Tony's team at Baker Donelson is innovative in a number of ways, not the least of which is in their approach to empowering their attorneys and support staff with increased autonomy over the eDiscovery process, an approach which has lowered overall costs for clients, sped access to data by trial teams, and reduced internal overhead and support needs. Their approach to selecting "the right tool for the right case" is key to driving client satisfaction, increasing cost predictability, and, in many ways, eliminating eDiscovery as a client issue that is usually rife with pitfalls.
Lindsay Kolar, Corporate Paralegal at Gordon Food Service: Fewer than 80 percent of in-house legal teams use a legal hold technology, often relying on manual processes, complicated reporting, and a whole lot of spreadsheets to issue and administer litigation holds. Lindsay and her team are proving that there's another way—one that does not destroy your budget or require complicated and legacy software. With Logikcull, Lindsay has helped transform internal legal hold processes from spreadsheet hell into a seamless approach where you can issue and track notifications in just a few minutes.
Julie Richer and Amanda Kerlee, American Electric Power: The AEP team has been transformative in their approach to in-house discovery work and have been leaders in the shift playing out across the entire industry—to do more work themselves in an effort to drive cost savings and enforce better data security practices. Among Logikcull users, they've also been innovative in the way they highlight their success internally, proving the value of an approach and scaling it throughout the organization.
Winner, Discovery Innovation: Julie Richer and Amanda Kerlee, AEP
The AEP team has integrated powerfully simple technology throughout their discovery process, from outside counsel to internal attorneys. Not only does that bring efficiency to their litigations and internal investigations, but it also allows Julie and Amanda to leverage technology as needed to "do the right thing"—whether by meeting internal demands on time and on budget or responding to urgent matters swiftly so that the business can make decisions with confidence.
Discovery Impact Award
For customers who are using Logikcull to make a big difference, in your matter, for your organization or client, or toward a good cause.
Nominees:
- Emily Ward, Attorney, Smith Gambrell
- William Hamilton, Sr. Legal Skills Professor, The University of Florida Levin College of Law
- The Southern Environmental Law Center
- The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Emily Ward, Smith Gambrell: Emily is a newer Logikcull user, but her powerful stories resonate with us all. Emily's practice mainly focuses on white-collar law, where, in many instances, she's assisting small businesses or sole practitioners in responding to third-party subpoenas they've been dragged into. When you think of white-collar litigation, you often think of high-profile, high-wealth disputes. That's not where she focuses. Instead, she's helping her clients weigh how they can respond to these third-party requests, often involving many thousands of documents—and still stay in businesses, which, these days, is no small feat. In the past, responding to those subpoenas could cost north of $20,000 and put clients in the unenviable position of bankrupting themselves to pay vendors or trying to handle discovery on their own. Emily is now using Logikcull to do this work at what she estimates to be 10% of the time and cost, which in her words, "provides my clients with an affordable avenue to justice."
William Hamilton, UF Law: Bill has been teaching an eDiscovery course to UF Law students since the dawn of the 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and has prepared many hundreds of aspiring attorneys to make an immediate impact on the law, on their firms, and on their clients by developing competency in a very technical, very fast-moving area of practice. He is passionate about teaching. He is generous about sharing his experiences and expertise. And he is a big proponent and advocate for access to justice, where he sees the ability to perform discovery with excellence as key to that particular institution—and to the legitimacy of the court system. Those are issues that matter now more than ever.
The Southern Environmental Law Center: SELC is an 80-attorney-strong public interest law firm that is championing some of the most important environmental causes, from guarding against industrial chemical pollution in the Atlantic Ocean to helping protect the communities on the East Coast that are most vulnerable to rising sea levels. They use Logikcul widely across seven of their main offices—including in litigation over the Atlantic Coast Pipeline case, where SELC is fighting a proposal for a fracked gas pipeline to be built across the Appalachian Trail. That case has gone before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and their representatives Yiota Souras and Preston Findlay: NCMEC engages in some of the most important public interest work in the nation. In short, they protect children. They provide assistance to victims, families, law enforcement, social service agencies, mental health agencies and others when they need help with a missing, exploited, or recovered child.
The work that they're doing in Logikcull also involves responding to requests for documents, primarily from defense counsel who are asking for many thousands, and in some cases millions, of files that the center has compiled from various sources to find and help exploited children.
Responding to discovery can often take away from the mission work that Yiota, Preston and their colleagues are pursuing, so when they can cut the time it takes to respond from weeks to hours, it frees them up to do things like have hard conversations with parents or lobby on the Hill for child protection laws.
Winner, Discovery Impact: The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
NCMEC's work is truly inspiring, and it's often accomplished on a shoe-string budget. For NCMEC, every expenditure, and every penny saved, has a significant impact. As Yiota Souras says, "every dollar we spend on eDiscovery is a dollar we can't spend fighting for children."
As winners of the first-ever Culler Award for Discovery Impact, NCMEC will never again have to choose between spending money on discovery or pursuing mission work.
We're honored to award the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children with a free, lifetime subscription to Logikcull.
