eDiscovery and ECM vendor eMag Solutions is currently on the hunt for additional regional sales/ESI consultants to be based in Chicago, New York and DC, reporting to the Atlanta, GA office of operations. A copy of the job description is listed below. To apply, please go to the careers section of the eMag Solutions website.

The ESI Consultant will prospect, contact, qualify, develop and manage accounts for eMag Solutions’ electronic discovery and computer forensic services and enterprise content management services and products. The position entails the management of all aspects of the sales cycle, from the initial contact and qualification of prospective accounts through securing opportunities and following up after the sale.

Responsibilities:

• Generate sales leads for electronic discovery and litigation support services into law firms and corporate legal departments
• Generate sales leads for eMag Solutions’ enterprise content management proprietary products and services
• Develop and manage relationships with prospects and clients that lead to new and expanded revenue opportunities for the company
• Understand prospective clients’ needs in electronic discovery management and enterprise content management
• Interact with existing and prospective customers in a consultative manner

Requirements:

• BA/BS degree desired
• 8‐10 years demonstrated success in a sales role
• A minimum of two years experience in the legal/technology industry
• Strong selling skills including prospect identification, proposal generation, presentation capabilities, and the ability to close the sale
• Ability to generate opportunities quickly with a focus on future growth
• Knowledge of the litigation and legal decision‐making processes, along with the use of technology to support litigation efforts (electronic discovery, document production, document management, etc.)
• Strong grasp on technical concepts, such as storage media, hash values, data querying and filtering, amongst others and be able to explain these as needed
• Ability to develop a firm understanding of other business units within the company and assist in cross‐unit lead generation activities
• Ability to learn technology details quickly and to communicate complex IT related solutions to end user accounts while working closely with vendor representatives in promoting related products and services
• Ability to interact at all levels in regard to both internal and external customers
• Strong computer skills, including MS Word, Outlook, Contact Managements systems
• Resourcefulness, and professionalism with general finance and business expertise
• Ability to routinely work with highly confidential and proprietary information
• Active team player with a positive attitude and problem solving skills
• Strong and effective communicator, both written and verbal, in addition to possessing strong analytical skills

Recently released emails and electronic documents from BP appear to reveal oversight on the part of some for the sake of saving time and money on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. This is one of those situations where I, for one, am glad that the people involved failed to realize how permanent electronic communications are, because it will allow us to, hopefully, get to the bottom of who did/said/authorized what. Without that information, all of this could have come down to a bunch of finger pointing with no real direction (although, honestly, it sort of feels like that now anyhow).  And yet, even though I'm glad they put this info in such an easily traceable form, it also disturbs me that people at this high of a level don't get that if you don't want people to know what you are doing/thinking, don't put it in writing. Everyone has heard of the proverbial 'paper trail' and still people don't think it will apply to them; they are somehow smarter than that and their 'paper' won't 'trail' back to them. I'm willing to bet each of the people cited in those emails is big-time regretting hitting the SEND button. Ultimately, this will not counter the damage done to the families of the deceased workers and the livelihoods of those who depend on the Gulf, but maybe, just maybe, this info will help to create some sort of legislation to prevent another disaster of this magnitude.

Currently on the EDRM site, they've put up a draft of their EDRM Production Standards for everyone to review and comment. 

Items covered include:

• Native/Near-Native Production
• Image/Native/Near-Native Production
• Image Production
• Custom
• On-line Production
• Quick Guide to Components of Productions A-D
• Pros & Cons for Production A-D
• Metadata Fields

Head on over to the EDRM site and give them your two cents!

For many organizations, staying afloat in today’s complex legal and financial environment has become increasingly difficult.The amount of data that flows through companies has exploded while compliance measures have increased and deadlines for discovery have shortened. Current economic troubles can overburden IT and legal departments in several ways — not only are companies tightening their belts wherever possible, but increases in lawsuits, regulatory requests, and government investigations invariably accompany financial downturns.

In the current economic climate, organizations are more concerned than ever about the spiraling amount of electronic information generated. Many organizations have not properly developed retention policies, defined information architecture, or prepared methodologies for dealing with requests for specific information from larger data pools. The struggle to manage the exponential growth of electronic information is a major concern from a cost, management, and efficiency standpoint.

To view the full article, please click here.

This article was originally published in the April 2010 issue of BNA, Inc.