Zelle Hofmann Hires Director of E-Discovery

Zelle Hofmann Voelbel & Mason LLP is pleased to announce the addition of an e-discovery expert to lead the firm’s electronic discovery and litigation support strategy.

With this hire, Zelle Hofmann becomes one of the few national law firms with an in-house attorney exclusively tasked with supporting the firm and its clients in managing e-discovery issues.

Eric Mandel has joined the firm as the Director of E-Discovery and Litigation Support. A licensed attorney and subject matter expert in electronic discovery and litigation readiness planning, Mandel is responsible for advising the firm and its clients on e-discovery and litigation readiness planning, and ensuring the firm's clients obtain the highest standards of legal services and cost-efficiencies through leveraging the use of the firm's existing e-discovery resources and advanced technology.

“Electronic discovery has fundamentally altered the litigation battlefield, and Zelle Hofmann is taking an aggressive position in tackling the complex legal issues and significant costs associated with this intersection of law, technology, records management and information science,” Mandel said. “There is a direct and immediate correlation between the rising costs of discovery our clients are seeing and the rising volumes of data that they are storing.  Zelle Hofmann is making intelligent use of advanced legal technology and defensible processes to cull non-relevant or privileged data prior to performing attorney review. The resulting cost savings to our clients can be hundreds of thousands of dollars or more without exposing them to unnecessary legal risk.”

Richard Voelbel, a member of Zelle Hofmann’s Executive Committee, explained the firm’s rationale for making such a significant – and still relatively rare – commitment: “E-discovery is discovery now. Since the implementation of the new federal rules, e-discovery has grown exponentially and clients need our help. Clients are constantly calling for innovative ways to control costs while meeting their discovery obligations. One of the ways we have answered this call is by developing the in-house expertise necessary to cut through the jargon and partner with our clients to make informed, cost-effective decisions. Eric represents the next step in this continuing commitment.” 

Prior to joining the firm, Mandel worked as an e-discovery consultant with two national litigation support vendors, where he engineered and supervised numerous domestic and international litigation and regulatory discovery projects. He has been responsible for managing the identification, preservation, collection, and processing of terabytes of electronically stored information from thousands of custodians around the world. 

Mandel is a member of The Sedona Conference, and an active participant in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) industry trade group, where he serves on the Model Code of Conduct project as co-chair and a principal author. Additionally, Mandel has developed a series of educational programs on e-discovery, and teaches Continuing Legal Education courses related to e-discovery across the country.