11 March 2019 (Paris, France) — When I moved to Europe in 2005, one of the first people I met in the litigation support and eDisclosure industry in the UK was Paul Mankoo. Paul was running Trilantic at the time. He in turn introduced me to Nigel Murray, a man we can all agree was at the forefront of the litigation support and eDisclosure industry in the UK. Nigel became one of the most avid readers of my blog. He encouraged my writing and he read every post and often emailed me critiques. My favourite: “man, that was waaaay too long … but I read it anyway” 🙂 You can read my tribute to Nigel here. Paul pays tribute to him in the video below.
Paul would eventually go onto bigger and better things such as the formation of UNIFIED (acquired by Inventus) which he formed with his partner Noel Kilby. UNIFIED would become a leading provider of eDiscovery and managed attorney review services to Fortune 1000 corporations, global law firms and government agencies abroad, hence its appeal to Inventus.
It was through managed attorney review services that Paul, Nigel and I became closer. They knew I had (and still do) the most extensive database of EMEA-based contract attorney reviewers. We ended up partnering on reviews in London, Paris, across Germany. Even in Oman. But we all realized UNIFIED was growing in leaps and bounds and really needed its own attorney review team, not a partnership with me, and I gladly assisted them in building that team.
But Paul also helped me to grow. He loved a poster I had on the wall in my office:
The gist? I write about technology all the time, what I call “technical writing”. But you cannot really do that well unless you “do the technology”, actually take it on board in your day-to-day operations. Understand it. Only that way can you really frame a concept, create the proper narrative. Because technology affects people both positively and negatively. You need to provide perspective.
It was Paul who showed me how to better analyse attorney document review output efficiency and accuracy … really develop good metrics … through a software that he and Noel had devised. And I certainly knew the search issues around these incredibly nuanced documents we were working with, written in highly technical language particular to a specific business. But it was Paul who helped me understand the best ways to use search technology to “read” those documents.
So for a very engrossing chat with Paul, please watch our interview: