At CDS, we let the work speak for itself. But behind every result is a team member that made it happen. Real People, Real Results is a monthly series that takes a closer look at the individuals who make up our team, exploring their backgrounds, their expertise, and what drives them.
This month, meet Devon Crosbie, a Director of Client Services at CDS.
Devon oversees operations and personnel while helping clients navigate complex eDiscovery matters with a consultative, solutions-focused approach. Since joining CDS in 2018, he has played a key role in strengthening client relationships and supporting the company’s growth by delivering tailored workflows, reporting strategies, and exceptional client service.
With more than 19 years of experience in the legal and eDiscovery industries, Devon brings a unique combination of technical expertise, legal knowledge, and operational leadership to every engagement. A licensed attorney, Relativity Master, DISCO Wizard, and Certified Information Privacy professional, he has worked with corporations and law firms on everything from government investigations to large-scale multidistrict litigation. Known for his innovative thinking and collaborative mindset, Devon is passionate about developing customized, end-to-end solutions that help clients achieve successful outcomes in even the most complex matters.
Tell us a bit about your career journey. What led you to client services?
I started out as a practicing attorney in the public interest sector, with a relatively brief detour through eDiscovery managed review before that. Litigation taught me a great deal, but I found I was more energized by the collaborative side of the work than the adversarial side. Client services turned out to be the right fit. It pairs lifelong interests in both law and technology with the parts of my role I enjoy most: helping people untangle complicated problems.
What qualities do you think distinguish great client service teams from good ones?
Partnership. A good team takes in a request, executes it cleanly, and closes it out.
A great team asks what the client is actually trying to accomplish and treats it as a common shared goal. That means consulting instead of order-taking, flagging gaps and pitfalls before they become problems, staying curious about the intent behind a request, and bringing hard-won experience to the answer. A request is rarely just a ticket to close. It is usually a signal of something bigger.
What’s something about the way CDS operates that you think sets it apart from other organizations in this space?
Our collaborative, cross-departmental approach is a big part of it, but I think what really distinguishes us is a culture of curiosity and innovation. CDS looks at the bigger picture, not only within our clients’ casework but across our own divisions and the industry as a whole. That habit surfaces patterns and insights we can turn into more scalable workflows, better proprietary tools and workflows, and outputs that hold up under scrutiny.
I’d also point to autonomy. Our people are trusted to own their expertise and apply it, which feels refreshing compared with environments where there’s more red tape around who is “allowed” to take something on.
If you could relive one moment from your life, what would it be?
Taking a Constitutional Law course with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She and Justice Scalia, famously close friends despite their ideological differences, used to trade off summers teaching the course at a law school in Istanbul, Turkey. I heard about it through a last-minute, word-of-mouth tip, signed up, and spent a few weeks in one of the most engaging classrooms I’ve ever been in. To this day it still secretly feels like a story I made up.
Do you prefer staying active or taking it easy in your downtime?
Staying active through outlets like exercise helps me stay energized, focused, and feeling grateful to be well and able. I also love to travel and explore different cultures, foods, ideas, places, and perspectives.
What’s something you hope to accomplish in the next chapter of your career?
Stay curious and keep growing. Practically, that means continuing education around tools like generative AI and LLMs, and using APIs to push what we can build with them. It also means expanding my own expertise into additional eDiscovery platforms like DISCO and Everlaw, both of which CDS fortunately supports.
Equally important, I aim to keep contributing to my team’s goals and help connect those around me with the opportunities and experiences they find genuinely enriching.
