Karin Jenson, partner, Redgrave LLP. Photo: Daniel Delgado.
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Karin Jenson was still working as a reporter for the The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, OH when a doctor who was in prison for Medicare fraud and drug trafficking unsuccessfully sued her for defamation.

The case brought her into contact with representatives from Baker Hostetler, the firm Jenson wound up joining a few years later after a brief stopover in law school. She went on to serve as lead counsel for e-discovery, information lifecycle and litigation hold teams at General Motors and is now in the process of transitioning into her new role as a partner at the information law-centric Redgrave LLP. Jenson will oversee the firm's Cleveland office.

Legaltech News recently sat down with Jenson about her new role and her e-discovery experience. This conversation was edited for clarity and length.

Legaltech News: Did your skills as a journalist coming in handy with some of your e-discovery work in terms of chasing down or organizing information?

Karin Jenson: Absolutely. I was always as a journalist, as you know, on the search for interesting facts, the facts that really explain a story, getting different pieces of a story. And that's really what helped me in my e-discovery life: really focusing on what matters, where I need to go to get the information that I needed. I think that just as a journalist you learn details, and as a e-discovery lawyer you need to be very detail-oriented.

What was the state of the practice of e-discovery at this point, when you were first starting out (in 2003)? Was it much different than it is now just in terms of where the technology was?

Yes, very different. Document productions were still generally on paper with base labels. Even if you were—and we were—reviewing electronically, it was the day of blowbacks. … Blowbacks are basically printing all of the emails that you were producing. You would blow them back onto paper and then base label them. But I have to say even though the state of e-discovery at the time that I was working on my first matter in 2003 and 2004 [was that] paper was still at play, the case forced me to really understand technology and look for a better way because it was obvious that there was a better way to organize data then using blowbacks and paper productions.

It seems like that's a pretty critical mindset to have, looking at how things could be done better. Is that something that, as you moved onto General Motors, you were able to carry over there?

Generally speaking, my approach through my entire career has always been—and I'm going to borrow a phrase that I learned from an e-discovery provider—to have professional curiosity. One thing that I have really learned is that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to e-discovery, and that's even more true today given companies, our clients, have a wide variety of data types.

You know, it isn't just Word documents and emails anymore. There are so many different types of data and there are so many redundant sources of data. There are so many unique data types for a particular company or even a particular person that we have to have professional curiosity, we have to have a curious mind to ask the questions on how we can do things differently and always ask “why.”

Do you see a change in the way you'll have to approach e-discovery moving from this huge entity at General Motors and into your new position at Redgrave?

I completely see e-discovery differently having the in-house counsel perspective. And I know that my counseling of clients will be with a different perspective now than it was before I had my tenure at GM, because I understand that it's difficult for outside counsel to know all of the variables. I think I'm going to be a better listener, I think I'm going to know better to ask questions, but I'm also going to be more sensitive to the fact that companies want to get things done. They want to innovate, and my job really is to be a partner to our clients to help them achieve their objectives, and I always knew that in the abstract before but I understand it so much better now.

When we look at e-discovery in general, do you think that it's being used to its fullest potential by firms and companies out there?

No I don't, and I hopefully never will. I think there's always room for improvement. This industry is evolving so quickly and there's technology to support any initiative that you may want to undertake. …

For me it's important that e-discovery lawyers have a strong litigation background, because that lends a different perspective to how you conduct e-discovery. You know to ask the question “what data will help resolve this issue and dispute?” as opposed to “what data relates to the subject matter of a case?” That can really make a difference in how a company explores discovery.

In your opinion, what do you think are some of the hardest e-discovery related questions that are facing firms today?

I would say dealing with new technology that employees use within a company because there are so many different types of really creative, interesting technologies that are coming out that make businesses processes more efficient, that make employees get answers quicker or analyze data quicker and we don't want e-discovery to butt heads with that. We want e-discovery to support that endeavor, but that's really difficult if the company's litigation profile would require a production of that data. How do we go about collecting and producing that data?

So it requires e-discovery lawyers to again be asking questions to constantly stay on top of the evolution of technology so that we can support our clients, so that we're not saying, “No, you can't use this new technology because we can't take discovery out of it.” We want to figure out a way to do it so that business can keep moving at the pace of business.

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