Interviews and discussions with global leaders in eDiscovery and adjacent disciplines. Interviews by Mary Mack and Kaylee Walstad.
Attorney, award-winning blogger, and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post titled "Henry Kissinger and His Last Book – GENESIS: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit".
Bruce Holbert, Senior Director of North American Channels for EDRM Trusted Partner Exterro sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about his journey to eDiscovery and Exterro. We talked about what attracted him to Exterro and how aligned principles provide a solid foundation for a long term mutually beneficial partnership. Bruce explained the different types of partners Exterro is seeking and also talked about his hobby of ultra-marathon training, including very long distance running in the woods of Alabama. We ended our conversation with a very surprising and delicious fun fact.
Attorney, award-winning blogger, and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post titled "From Prompters to Partners: The Rise of Agentic AI in Law and Professional Practice".
Attorney, award-winning blogger, and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post titled "AI Can Improve Great Lawyers - But It Can't Replace Them".
In the twenty ninth episode of EDRM Trusted Partner, HaystackID's monthly podcast series, Dorothe Schuch, Vice President of Forensic Logistics and Evidence Management at HaystackID, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about her journey to forensics, eDiscovery, and HaystackID. We talked about how mentors have made a difference in her career, and how Dorothe is paying mentorship forward. Dorothe encouraged our listeners to never stop learning, as every day brings changes in eDiscovery practice. We previewed her presentation at WiECON25 with tips on getting the most from your data. We ended our conversation with her very surprising fun fact.
Attorney, award-winning blogger, and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on the "Bots Battle for Supremacy in Legal Reasoning - Part Five: Reigning Champion, Orion, ChatGPT-4.5 Versus Scorpio, ChatGPT-o3".
Attorney, award-winning blogger, and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on the "Dario Amodei Warns of the Danger of Black Box AI that No One Understands".
Erica Zolner, Partner and Executive Committee leader at EDRM Trusted Partner, Redgrave LLP, sits down with Kaylee and Mary to talk about her journey to eDiscovery, her leadership style, trends beyond GenAI, and her triple fun fact. Erica also answered our questions about a groundbreaking article she co-authored with William Farrier regarding the Trembly v. OpenAI, Inc.. case entitled, "Uncharted Waters: Work Product Protection for Attorneys' Use of Generative AI."
Attorney, award-winning blogger, and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on the "Zero to One: A Visual Guide to Understanding the Top 22 Dangers of AI".
Attorney, award-winning blogger, and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on the "Bar Battle of the Bots – Part Four: Birth of Scorpio".
In the twenty eighth episode of EDRM Trusted Partner, HaystackID's monthly podcast series, Aaron Pribil, Director of Product Management, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about his journey to eDiscovery and HaystackID, his crossfunctional approach to product management and how that informed the newly released CoreFlex single pane of glass for legal departments and what trends he is tracking as he talks with practice teams. We ended our conversation with a delicious fun fact.
Bennett Borden, founder and CEO of Clarion AI Partners, sits down with Kaylee and Mary to share his journey from the CIA to law school and BigLaw eDiscovery, to his decision to refresh his data skills at NYU. Bennett explained why he founded Clarion AI Partners, and how Clarion AI Partners not only advises on the legal aspects of AI, but also builds new systems and validates existing AI systems, with a structured approach to include safety and effectiveness, along with regulatory and ethical requirements. He explained their mission of including AI for Good, exploiting not only the promise of AI, but also addressing the risks and harms it can cause in a quantifiable way by use case. We ended with Bennett's fun fact with a promise to keep talking.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on "Afraid of AI? Learn the Seven Cardinal Dangers and How to Stay Safe."
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post, "Custom GPTs: Why Constant Updating Is Essential for Relevance and Performance." The podcasters dig into Ralph's post on what a GPT is, and how the rapid acceleration of LLM model introduction impacts the viability of GPT's to keep working appropriately. Behavioral tuning, like what the GPT's purpose is, and what to avoid is explained. They delve into RAG, and custom knowledge to improve results and reduce hallucinations. The podcasters emphasize that the quality of what is uploaded (private knowledge) must be evaluated along with the LLM update. They review the Visual Muse, AI Speaks to Seniors and other GPTs created by Ralph, looking at the Visual Muse as Ralph's collaborator.
Rob Robinson, Editor and Managing Director of EDRM Trusted Partner, ComplexDiscovery OU, and CMO at EDRM's Trusted Partner HaystackID sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about his journey from attack helicopter pilot to eDiscovery, the evolution of Andrew Haslam's storied eDisclosure Buyers Guide, ComplexDiscovery's growth from eDiscovery analysis to reporting on systemic governance and risk, including the geopolitical, outside of the eDiscovery bubble. We ended the conversation with a double fun fact hit, with an invitation to reach out.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on his ePluribus Unum article, as they discuss ways AI can help reduce polarization in the body politic. The recommendations have been reduced to eight categories of activities, beginning with quick wins at the local level. The podcasters sound wistful as they discuss ways to bring humankind together. Read the blog post they are discussing here: https://losey.ai/healing-a-divided-nation-an-8-step-path-to-unity-guided-by-ai/.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post, "Escaping Orwell's Memory Hole: Why Digital Truth Should Outlast Big Brother." The podcasters dig into Ralph's post on how digital systems can be erased of certain content, easier in some ways than Orwell's memory holing of printed material, and more difficult, since the Internet remembers everything. The Internet Archive and content replication on the net preserves, but may not be easy to find, especially with filtering firewalls. The discussion includes the psychological impact of information being difficult to find, or untrusted. The podcasters conclude with steps to strengthen our psychological resilience.
In the twenty seventh episode of EDRM Trusted Partner, HaystackID's monthly podcast series, Esther Birnbaum, Executive Vice President of Legal Data Intelligence, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about how her in house experience informs her approach to Legal Data Intelligence. Esther talked about her experience with Generative AI applied to document review and how HaystackID has integrated it into its full suite of service offerings. Esther also explained where HaystackID will be during Legalweek (Booth #3121) and the awards Hal Brooks and Vazantha (V) Meyers will receive, ending on a surprising fun fact about her.
John Tredennick, CEO and founder of EDRM Trusted Partner, Merlin Search Technologies, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about his journey from litigation partner to eDiscovery entrepreneur, why he founded another eDiscovery company, how the fourth generation of his AI-first platform, rebranded from Discovery Partner to Alchemy, differs from its previous incarnations, and differs from his first company's innovation with CAL, Catalyst. Our discussion traversed the surprising facility of Merlin Alchemy to go beyond summarizations and timelines to actually crafting case outlines, compelling closing arguments even with high volume and difficult data types, like medical records and construction documents. John will demo Alchemy at Legalweek, and on the EDRM Global Webinar Platform. Register here: https://gateway.on24.com/wcc/eh/4208134/lp/4891509/introducing-merlin-alchemy-using-next-generation-genai-to-transform-information-into-intelligence
Xen Hartzell, podcast producer and editor of the Illumination Zone, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to celebrate the Illumination Zone's 200th episode. Xen's fiction podcasts "Midst" and "Unend" have repeatedly topped global fiction podcast charts and have garnered numerous editing and audio drama podcasting awards. Xen set the foundation for the Illumination Zone and has been behind the scenes editing the show since day 1. After sharing their journey to eDiscovery through Death Metal, EDRM's best kept secret came over to the other side of the mic to interview us as we look back on 200 episodes of the Illumination Zone and reflect on the past, present, and future of eDiscovery and podcasting.
Nicole Fryson, Director of Managed Review with EDRM Trusted Partner, Level Legal, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about her journey to eDiscovery, the people and culture of Level Legal, some of the challenges in her 20 years of managed review, the difference in uptake of GenAI and TAR, the difference in cities from New Delhi to Minneapolis, DC and Atlanta, and ending with a fun fact about her.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post, "New Battle of the Bots: ChatGPT 4.5 Challenges Reigning Champ ChatGPT 4o". The podcasters dig into the results of the test Ralph put them through. They zeroed in on the humor test, and were amazed that the bots were developing their own taste in humor. Not quite AGI, the podcasters discussed the feeling of "qualia" as a distinctly (for now) human sense of wonder and awareness of consciousness as a differentiator from human consciousness. The podcast ended with an encouragement to minimize hallucinations with tips like developing careful, specific prompting and more. While the podcasters still cannot pronounce Ralph Losey's last name correctly, they brought their A game to the critique.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post, "Bar Battle of the Bots - Part 2". The podcasters dig into what happened with buying and selling a diamond where the price quoted was dramatically low. They then dive into the legal issues and how the issues were presented, fangirling over Mae West and then looking at an actual Florida case on point for "unilateral mistake" and what should be done to resolve the dispute. They also talk about what the LLM's got right, and wrong, with a discussion of the thought process of the LLM in breaking down and synthesizing the answers.
Sergey Demyanov, Founder and CEO of EDRM Trusted Partner, Beagle, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about his journey to eDiscovery, the core values of Beagle, what makes Beagle so different, and what kind of legal teams are in focus for Beagle. Sergey's fun fact will endear him to our Australian community. Sergey and Team Beagle will be on the Exhibit Floor at Legalweek, Booth 3303, Americas Hall 2 at the Midtown Hilton. Sergey welcomes those wanting to contact him to book a meeting https://discoverbeagle.com, whether for a private demo or discussion at Legalweek, or to have a conversation. Register for EDRM's webinar featuring Beagle's platform on March 19th here: How to Get AI Benefits Without Getting Into Trouble - https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/4881559/037043AACD3165C87192DB139A346B04?partnerref=EDRMpod
Kara Barnes, Managing Director with EDRM Trusted Partner, Ankura, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about her journey to eDiscovery and focusing on the most challenging and enjoyable projects she's stewarded for clients. We explored the impact great mentors and large language models have on eDiscovery practice and our personal lives and we concluded with a fun fact about Kara.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's blog post as he attempted to replicate the research done on large language models (LLMs) and the bar exam. Previously published research awarded the earlier version of ChatGPT highest honors on the bar exam, creating a chill down the spine of attorneys and law students. Ralph Losey picked a bar exam question, documented his process in prompts and the LLMs' responses and graded, as a law professor might, the answers. The LLMs will not be replacing top attorneys today, Ralph concluded, although the majority would pass the exam.
In the twenty sixth episode of EDRM Trusted Partner, HaystackID's monthly podcast series, the man with the stories which can never be told, John Wilson, the Chief Information Security Officer and President of Forensics at HaystackID, returned to the Illumination Zone to sit down with Kaylee and Mary to talk about how HaystackID's triage tools address proportionality and privacy requirements in civil litigation, and how they can be best used during internal investigations and white collar work. The tools, Mobile Elite Discovery and Analysis Lab (MEDAL™) and Remote Endpoint Analysis and Data Intelligence (READi™), are finalists for Legalweek's Best Emerging Technology (Non-AI). John also gave our listeners a sneak peek on some upcoming releases and how to score a coveted invitation to HaystackID's legendary whisky and cigar gathering during Legalweek 2025.
Dr. Mark Pedigo, a PhD data scientist, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about his journey to data science, the life and death problems he has addressed using data science, including a study of mothers and infants in Mississippi, and another diving into data about opioid prescribing providers. Mark talked about his first programming job for an educational software company, where he evaluated the quality of burps to add to a game. Mark, a jazz musician, is seeking his next opportunity to solve meaningful problems with his advanced skill set.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post after testing OpenAI, Gemini and DeepSeek. Ralph's test was to ask each AI platform the difference between "reasoning" and "legal reasoning." Noting the security and privacy problems of DeepSeek, Ralph compared the responses of each AI with each other. The short podcast summarizes and discusses the implications of Ralph Losey's testing, recommending listeners dive in with cautious enthusiasm.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's two EDRM blog posts on the release of the groundbreaking DeepSeek, with its reasoning exposed to the prompter. DeepSeek's relative cost to train spooked the US markets and caused OpenAI to release similar reasoning functionality. Ralph tested each of the new LLM releases by comparing their reasoning and responses. He offered his expert recommendations for our legal tech community.
Ryan Costello, Director of Program Management - Advisory Services for our wonderful Trusted Partner, HaystackID, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about his journey to eDiscovery including work with Project Counsel and Project Counsel Media and what attracted him to HaystackID. Kaylee and Mary first met Ryan at Trusted Partner, Adrian Kiernan's and La Touche Training's wonderful Legal Tech Conference in Dublin, Ireland. Ryan, a CIPP for both the US and the EU, gave us a bird's eye view of the Legal Data Intelligence initiative stewarded by another of our Trusted Partners, Relativity. We ended on a hilarious fun fact, and an open invitation to return. The article referenced in the podcast can be found here: https://haystackid.com/privacy-without-borders-ryan-costello-brings-global-expertise-to-haystackid/.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and his blog post "The Human Edge: How AI Can Assist But Never Replace." Parsing out intuition and emotion as differentiators, the AI Podcasters, channeling their inner "humanity", discuss how humans need to oversee the AI, and how AI does not have the creative spark or depth of feeling or spirituality of creative artists and scientists. They continue to advocate for collaboration between human and AI. They wonder, on our human behalf, what does it mean to be human? Are we no longer central? They are enamored of human multidimensionality and invite us all to ask the big questions and to keep our sense of wonder.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and his 2024 Year End Essay, "Reflections." The AI podcasters take questions as they answer audience questions about the benefits and concerns about AI agents joining the workforce, ensuring access across society, and detecting and minimizing biases. They are very excited about making legal help more efficient and more accessible. They wonder who is responsible if the AI makes a mistake.
Jess Moore, Inside Sales for our wonderful Trusted Partner, HaystackID, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about her journey to eDiscovery, what attracted her to HaystackID, how she approached her role as a new administrative assistant to grow into creating a Customer Success initiative and role. We talked about some standout moments and Jess' approach to meetings at Houston's renown Women in eDiscovery chapter, and ended with one of the most shocking fun facts we've heard: shark diving!
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on Key AI Leaders of 2024: Huang, Amodei, Kurzweil, Altman, and Nobel Prize Winners - Hassabis and Hinton. The podcasters discuss Ralph's take on these highly creative and accomplished changemakers, and their philosophies and risk assesments. Ralph stretches the limit of the auto generated podcast format by adding in call-in questions for the AIs to answer.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on Google's breakthrough on quantum computing, explaining the basics, and the potential benefits. Looking at the promise, the podcasters talk about some dangers like being able to decrypt previously secure state. The competition between nations, and space exploration are also discussed. The podcasters end on the concept of "time crystals" entangled into other dimensions and speeding up medical research. Take a listen to this discussion impact of Willow on our idea of our place in the universe, and how it might improve humanity. Stay to the end to hear Ralph enter a discussion directly with the AI podcasters.
Jenna Rooney, Director of Client Services for Arete sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about her journey to eDiscovery, winning not one, but two, Innovation Awards at this year's Relativity Fest, and the similarities and differences between eDiscovery and Incident Response. You know Jenna Rooney also offered a great fun fact about herself, one that, in her signature fashion, resulted in yet another technical certification!
Anthony Diaz, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for EDRM Trusted Partner, Exterro, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about his journey to eDiscovery, Exterro's attainment of the coveted HITRUST certification and trends he sees emerging in our practices. Anthony also explained how Exterro's HITRUST initiative correlates with the stages of the EDRM, and the data hygiene Exterro practices around encrypting data, not only at rest and in transit. He emphasized that besides the encryption of data, Exterro does not have access to client credentials, ending with a fun fact about him and an AI movie recommendation.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on a new genre he is pioneering, using ChatGPT to write, in this case, science fiction. Listen to an AI with its own mind, on trial for its life due to forces misunderstanding and mistrusting them.
Kris Taylor, President of EDRM Trusted Partner, Purpose Legal, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about his journey to eDiscovery- from the restaurant business in his younger days to eDiscovery via his brother, Kim Taylor and the magic he and Greg Mazares, Purpose Legal's CEO, share. Kris also talked about the trends he sees emerging in eDiscovery, what Purpose Legal is doing to capitalize on them, ending with Kris sharing a surprising fun fact about himself.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on The Theory of Mind (ToM) which appears to have emerged as an unintended by product of LLMs' improving language skills. They discuss Michal Kosinski's article, "Evaluating large language models in theory of mind tasks" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences "PNAS," 11/04/24). Ralph Losey used this ToM approach in creating the 11 Point Bipartisan Plan to Repair a House Divided discussed in Episode 8, Echoes of AI.
Stephanie Wienke, Security Specialist for our wonderful Trusted Partner, HaystackID, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about her journey to eDiscovery, how her English major and creative writing background helps in the security field and how she and her team collaborate to keep the organizational certifications active and current. She explained HaystackID's mentorship culture and the security certifications she is pursuing in the near term.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on his summary of AI's bipartisan plan to repair a house divided by polarization after the November 2024 election. The 11 point comprehensive plan, laid out on the Losey.AI website gives practical steps for neighbors and fellow citizens to intentionally bridge the gap.
Illumination Zone: Infinnium's Chief Revenue Officer, Doug Kaminski, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about what drew him to Infinnium, what he sees in the Infinnium platform and the Infinnium culture and how he plans to introduce Infinnium to his very diverse network. We also received an update on how the #SoSoxy phenomenon has been going at the many conferences Doug has attended this year.
Yana Dashevsky, Vice President of Business Development for our wonderful Trusted Partner, HaystackID, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to talk about her journey to eDiscovery and the US, her unique approach to conversations with clients, what drew her to HaystackID and a fun fact about her.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on Ralph's EDRM blog post on his summary of AI's bipartisan plan to repair a house divided by polarization after the November 2024 election. The 10 point comprehensive plan, laid out on the Losey.AI website gives practical steps for neighbors and fellow citizens to intentionally bridge the gap.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on his EDRM blog post on Designing Generative AI for Legal Professionals. Ralph applies the findings of a May 2024 study by IBM researchers, including designing for both imperfection and co-creation.
Robert Keeling, Partner and leader of Redgrave's Second Request Practice sits down with Kaylee and Mary to talk about moving his highly technical and experienced practice team from Sidley to Redgrave. Known to many as the "King of Second Requests", Robert explained what makes that discipline challenging, and also what the "First request" is. Robert noted his and Redgrave's complimentary business models for providing the eDiscovery and technical foundation for merits counsel. We talked about Robert's pro bono work on unaccompanied minors, along with a very surprising and illuminating fun fact about him. We ended thanking Robert, the inaugural Chair of the EDRM Global Advisory Council, for his many contributions to our EDRM community.
Tom Gelbmann, Co-Founder of the EDRM, sits down with Kaylee & Mary to catch us up on what's been happening with him since his last Illumination Zone appearance three years ago. We talked about how the iconic EDRM model came about, his thoughts on the EDRM 2.0 update for it, the IGRM and we elicited a fun fact about this OG of the eDiscovery community.
Peter Gronvall, Senior Managing Director, Data & Technology for EDRM Trusted Partner, Ankura, sits down with Kaylee and Mary to talk about his journey to eDiscovery from his Wall Street law firm days. Peter described his team's engineering approach to legal technology challenges in finding the right data and producing it timely, the unique challenges their flagship antitrust practice solves and how his background in construction informs building his businesses and relationships, ending with an invitation to share in the results of Ankura's research, scholarship and case studies.
Attorney, award winning blogger and AI expert Ralph Losey's curated and vetted podcast features his Anonymous Podcasters as they do a deep dive on his EDRM blog post analyzing an article by Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, creator of the LLM “Claude." They discuss Dario's view that with AI, we may compress 100 years of medical progress into a decade, cure mental illnesses such as PTSD and depression, and alleviate poverty.