eDiscovery Leaders Live: Ben Hammerton of Quantuma

Intro

Ben Hammerton, Director in Quantuma’s National Forensic Accounting & Investigations team, joined George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal-Brainspace, for ACEDS #eDiscoveryLeadersLive sponsored by Reveal.

Ben advises law firms and in-house legal teams on legal technology and advisory services. He works closely with clients and contacts to continue to develop the company’s forensic accounting services with a particular focus on eDisclosure. He also advises clients, among other things, on data mapping, data strategy, and workflow design.

Prior to joining Quantuma in May 2021, Ben provided eDiscovery solutions for a variety of organizations. He served as Head of Sales for the UK and Europe at Servient and, before that, through leadership roles at such companies as Consilio, Apogee, EY, and UNIFIED.

Ben spoke on the industry’s growing acceptance of public cloud applications due to near-universal trust for well-known platforms such as AWS as well as the ease of being able to modify the technology. This phenomenon has also streamlined the process, having reduced the amount of hardware that any one organization needs to shoulder and, for better or worse, the amount of in-house personnel responsible for the technology.

Ben noted that when considering a new eDiscovery platform, he looks for familiarity first, self-service second, and how the technology can augment a standard review workflow third.

“All workflows,” said Ben, “should start simple and sensible, and then you add to them.”

Key Highlights

• The market has changed dramatically, particularly over the past three years. Ben talked in particular about the rise of cloud acceptance.
• Self-service is another advantage of utilizing these new eDiscover platforms. Ben explained how “self-service means different things to different people” and how this has streamlined workflows considerably.
• Ben discussed how he uses Reveal to keep good records of what was done by whom and when.
• Ben talked about what he looks for in an eDiscovery platform, including capabilities such as intelligent prioritization and concept searching.

Powerful Quotes by Ben Hammerton

• The rise of cloud acceptance has made a big change to eDiscovery because in the last few years, we’ve seen a lot more true cloud eDiscovery platforms.
• The first thing [I look for in an eDiscovery platform] is familiarity. You want to be able to log into it and see something familiar so you can get to where you need to get to without having to go and read a guide—or, if there is a guide, it’s only two pages.
• All workflows should start simple and sensible, and then you add to them.

Connect with Ben

• Ben Hammerton on LinkedIn