Evie Mackay Discusses the Importance of People and Strong Leadership in Document Review

Evie, welcome to FTI Technology! Let’s start with your background and expertise.

I’ve been in the e-discovery space for about 10 years with various consultancies, including several years focused on dealing with audio evidence in sanction reviews. Throughout my career to date, I’ve developed competencies and expert certifications with many of the leading e-discovery technology platforms, including Brainspace and Relativity. I have a lot of experience in developing unique workflows and strategies within these platforms that address cost, time, efficiency and quality challenges on matters involving large volumes of data and unique data types.

Most recently, I spent six years with Special Counsel, first as a review manager working in antitrust and healthcare matters, and eventually in a leadership role. In 2018, I moved from the U.S. to London with a core team of review managers to continue our firm’s U.K. expansion, during which I focused on developing the team, operations and go-to-market strategy.

What led you to join FTI Technology? What do you view as unique about our offerings compared to other providers?

Being focused on managed review, I see a tremendous amount of opportunity for clients in combining the power of technology with insights and experience from people. FTI Technology does this very well. I view our firm as having the strongest technology teams in the industry. Globally, our people are the top experts in this field—true leaders in leveraging e-discovery tools to solve problems and bringing complex solutions to market.

We also have a breadth of experience that’s rare at many other firms. Collectively, we can draw upon a cross-functional skillset to meet any client need at the drop of a hat, from computer forensics and e-discovery workflows to emerging data, antitrust expertise and data privacy compliance. This is important because in e-discovery, the work often extends beyond the foundational disclosure and review exercises. New problems often arise after the initial problem has been solved, and clients need access to guidance for how to overcome any unexpected or perpetual challenges they encounter over the life of a matter.

Now that you’re here, what’s the scope of your role? What do you plan to focus on?

In addition to the people, a big part of my move to FTI Technology was to further develop as a leader and growth driver within a global organization. To that end, I’m looking to improve the visibility of the Managed Document Review pillar across the Technology segment in EMEA. So, one part of my role will be leading our managed review teams and client engagements. Additionally, I’ll be collaborating with country leaders in the U.K., Ireland, France, Germany and other areas to demonstrate how our managed review offerings and solutions such as Find Facts Fast can augment our full suite of e-discovery consulting and services to drive more efficiencies, early case insights and cost predictability for clients.

What are some of the biggest challenges clients are currently facing in e-discovery and document review?

My view of the key challenges is aligned with what most of our experts have been vocal about over the past two years—the sheer volume of data. It’s a big issue that’s only getting bigger. Many legal teams are dealing with lean resources on top of tight timelines for discovery, a backlog of cases delayed during COVID and growing volumes of data. For example, on one recent matter, our client had only two weeks to find out the facts of a case within in a massive dataset and answer requests from investigators, before launching a full scale review. Having the right tools, people, leadership and expertise in place to extract information from the documents as quickly as possible was the critical piece in meeting the deadline.

Another challenge is the ongoing increase of data breaches. Clients must coordinate a lot of moving parts in the wake of a breach, including identifying and extracting data to understand what was breached. Our review team will be working with our Information Governance, Privacy & Security practice, as well as across other FTI Consulting segments, to rework our discovery tools and review methodologies in support of this type of work. I think we’ll see a lot of demand for post-data breach e-discovery work and technology development in the months and years ahead. Our people are perfectly primed to create and deliver these types of solutions, and I look forward to helping our EMEA Managed Document Review practice move into this area.

The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of FTI Consulting, its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals.