Wendy King of FTI Consulting is an interviewer’s delight, giving crisp answers which tell us all we need to know in as few words as possible. I took the opportunity to talk to her at Relativity Fest in Chicago.

I asked her first about the Relativity migration service which FTI announced at ILTA (and which I wrote about here). The migration of data can be complex and time-consuming. It needs considerable skill, not least on project management, and it is helpful to involve a company like FTI who knows what to prepare for and what to look for afterwards.

FTI seems to have taken the lead among all those who offer RelativityOne, and I asked Wendy King why she thinks that this has worked so well for FTI.

Wendy King said that FTI’s business is not just the use of software, but consulting to solve problems such as cross-border discovery. Many of FTI’s clients, old and new, are comfortable with Relativity, and there is continuing demand for Relativity skills going beyond migrating data into it.

At the time of our interview, we had just seen the launch of the results of a survey undertaken by FTI, Relativity and Ari Kaplan (I wrote about that here). One of the conclusions in the survey was that GCs are getting more knowledgeable about technology and how it can be used in support of the business. They are seeing where technology such as active learning can be used to reduce the costs of eDiscovery.

Beyond that, growing regulatory changes require GCs to know where their data is so that they can react to a data subject access request or deal with a data breach. They need to know what technology is available to meet challenges like this.

Increasingly, clients are coming to FTI and not merely waiting for FTI to offer its services. Wendy King is seeing stronger partnerships between consulting firms, external law firms and clients.

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