Join us in getting to know Cross-border eDiscovery Consultant Doug Batcheller.
Tell us about your background and what led you to becoming an eDiscovery translation consultant.
Recently I was a consultant for an international risk management firm. We supported clients with cross-border eDiscovery for global litigation, international investigations, FCPA, etc. Reviewing foreign language ESI was becoming a difficult challenge for my clients. Foreign language ESI is growing exponentially and translations are an important component in the review process. So I looked into translation firms and liked VIA’s approach.
What is one trend that you’re seeing in the industry that you think law firms and corporations should be aware of and why?
I am seeing more and more firms looking to leverage machine translation technology to reduce the burden of foreign language review. Human translation and native language review will always be necessary; but firms that have not considered machine translation are overlooking an important tool. It has several important applications – including supporting the predictive coding workflow.
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What is one tip you tell all your cross-border eDiscovery clients?
Employ machine translation early on in the discovery process to reduce the amount of time and money spent on review.
Granted this is a little biased, but why is it important for law firms and corporations to work with a specialized legal translation partner and what should they look for when choosing one?
Lawyers don’t sleep and work seven days a week. They are up against difficult to meet deadlines and require partners who will work beside them. It is critical to find a translation partner that is available when you need them – outside of “normal” business hours. Also, translation providers who do not specialize in legal might not understand the importance of data privacy. One of my clients was put into a very difficult position by a translation partner who did not understand data privacy. My client asked a translation provider if it had in-country linguists in China because her documents needed to stay in China for data privacy concerns. They assured her they did. Later she discovered that the documents were indeed translated in China but sent to the US for QC. Awkward!
Since we’re getting to know your work, it would be great to get to know a little about you. What is your ideal day outside of the office?
Sleep until my body tells me it is time to wake up, enjoy breakfast and coffee with my wife, play 18 holes, tinker around the yard, and end the day with another great meal and cocktails with my wife. #heaven
