Exterro, a provider of Legal GRC software for in-house legal teams, recently named legal discovery expert and technologist Jenny Hamilton as General Counsel. It’s an interesting hire since Hamilton was the former head of the e-discovery team at John Deere (“nothing runs like a Deere”), a Fortune 100 company. John Deere is a longtime customer of Exterro.
It’s interesting since Hamilton spent a lot of time evaluating competing e-discovery products in her role at John Deere. She ultimately became familiar with and selected Exterro’s technology suite as its chief e-discovery tool. So she brings a unique familiarity and perspective as a customer of Exterro and is an e-discovery process expert. I was able to chat recently with Hamilton about her new position, the discovery market, and market trends in general.
Hamilton started her career selling computers at Gateway. (Some of you may remember Gateway, the South Dakota company that revolutionized the online sale of personal computers. I still have one, although it is long past its prime). One of Hamilton’s main concerns then—and now—was the compatibility of hardware and software with other systems and products. As Hamilton discovered, things have to work together for work to get done.
Subsequently, Hamilton was hired by John Deere in 2006. She was tasked with leading Deere’s compliance with the at that time new federal rule requirements for e-discovery. Like many companies at that time, Deere was looking at what appeared to be a monumental compliance task. Hamilton figured out early on that one key e-discovery issue for Deere-like other companies-was preservation. She told me that while other parts of e-discovery compliance can be outsourced, it’s pretty hard, especially at that time, to outsource preservation.
Another smart move by Hamilton: she brought into her team a business analyst with
