US Magistrate Judge Paul W. Grimm

Judge Grimm serves as a full time Magistrate Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. He was appointed in February 1997. Additionally, Judge Grimm is an Adjunct faculty member of the University of Maryland School of Law, where he teaches trial evidence, pretrial civil procedure, and scientific evidence. Judge Grimm is a graduate of the University of California, and the University of New Mexico School of Law.

Former US Magistrate Judge Ronald J. Hedges, Nixon Peabody LLP

Judge Hedges has served as a United States Magistrate Judge since 1986. He is a member of, among others, the American Law Institute and has lectured on various topics; including electronic discovery, for the ALI-ABA Committee on Continuing Legal Education and other organizations. The author of numerous articles and the co-editor of the Sedona Guidelines: Best Practices Addressing Protective Orders, Confidentiality & Public Access in Civil Cases, he also sits on Georgetown Law Center’s National Law Alumni Board and the E-Discovery Institute Advisory Board.

Cynthia B. Bateman
RP Senior Litigation Paralegal, Georgia-Pacific

Cynthia is a legal holds and collections process expert and a frequent contributor to high-level industry discussions of litigation hold best practices, data accessibility challenges, and other critical discovery topics.

Kevin Esposito
Director of Electronic Discovery, Pfizer Inc.

Prior to becoming an attorney, Kevin developed and managed global technology support organizations for United Parcel Service for 17 years. He is a frequent speaker at technology and legal conferences and specializes in bridging the communication gap that exists between business people, technologists, and lawyers.

Kathy Hogy
Litigation Manager, First Data Corporation

Kathy heads up the company’s legal holds, collections and discovery process. She led the implementation of software to automate holds, as a repository of all internal collections, and to facilitate ongoing routine collections in legal matters.

Tom Lahiff
Assistant General Counsel, Corporate Litigation Group, Citigroup

Tom is responsible for a broad range of litigation, corporate policy, record retention, and e-discovery issues. He has lectured on the attorney-client privilege, document retention, and e-discovery. He began his career as law secretary to Chief Justice Richard J. Hughes of the New Jersey Supreme Court. After completing his clerkship he was an associate with Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom. Tom graduated from the Seton Hall University School of Law in 1978.

Miles O’Meara
OGC Business Management, Merrill Lynch

Miles is a director in Merrill Lynch’s Office of General Counsel. He specializes in complex program management and is currently managing the firm’s electronic discovery initiative, which is aimed at improving discovery processes and effectively managing discovery costs. Miles has over 12 years of experience in the financial industry and has spent time in many focus areas; including marketing, technology, debt product distribution, syndicate equity, legal, and human resources.

Reza Memar
Sr. Director of Client Services and Support, PSS Systems

Reza has assisted dozens of companies implementing legal holds, discovery, and retention solutions. In these activities, he often functions as a translator between the litigation team and the IT department. Reza has over 20 years of experience in product and solution definition, development, deployment, and support of various software technologies. Reza spent the first fifteen years of his career at Hewlett-Packard. He held various positions in HP’s R&D and Services organizations. Reza holds a BS in Industrial and Systems Engineering from University of Southern California and an MS in Computer Science from San Diego State University.

Tom Morrissey
Senior Director, IT Litigation, Purdue Pharma LP

Tom is responsible for the development and implementation of technology for the Legal Department at Purdue Pharma LP. His responsibilities include all aspects of collection, preservation, discovery and production of documents and data in support of the office of General Counsel. Tom works closely with counsel, vendors and consultants in support of these efforts. His experience prior to Purdue was as the Manager of Practice Systems for Summation Legal Technologies, Inc and CaseVault in New York. Tom has a BBA degree and a Paralegal Certificate.

Cathy Muir
Senior Corporate Counsel, Sprint Nextel

Cathy leads the e-discovery and records compliance initiatives for Sprint Nextel. She has been with the company for eight years.

Deidre Paknad
President & CEO, PSS Systems Inc., Founder, CGOC

Deidre leads PSS Systems and is the innovator behind the company’s visionary Atlas legal holds and retention management software. She founded the CGOC in early 2004, is a member of the Sedona legal holds and legacy data teams, and is a recognized subject matter expert on legal holds and enterprise retention management. She is a seasoned software entrepreneur and executive. Deidre previously founded and was CEO of CoVia Technologies, where she was twice inducted into the Smithsonian Institution for innovation.

Harold J. Ruvoldt
Litigation & Dispute Resolution Corporate Governance & Regulatory Government Investigations & White Collar Defense, Nixon Peabody

Harold has extensive diverse experience in complex civil litigation and white-collar criminal litigation. His experience spans a wide spectrum of intricate commercial litigations, and criminal defense. Harold has been lead counsel in a wide variety of class actions; he has tried more than 150 cases to verdict in both state and federal courts. He has served as principal outside counsel for a number of corporations and it’s executives in many matters. He has a J.D. and an LL.B. from Seton Hall University and an M.B.A. from Rutgers University Graduate School.

Eric Schwarz
Americas Leader, Legal Technology Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services, Ernst & Young, LLC

Eric is an internationally recognized thought leader and testifying expert in the field of electronic discovery and computer forensics. He is a participant in the Sedona Conference Working Group on Best Practices for Electronic Document Retention and Production and will lead the Litigation Hold Special Project Team with Ashish Prasad from Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw and Elizabeth Cabraser of Lieff, Cabraser, Heinmann & Bernstein.