As part of our Women’s History Month series celebrating the remarkable women who help shape CDS and the broader legal technology community, we’re proud to spotlight Katie Peloquin, Client Director at Complete Discovery Source.
Throughout March, CDS is highlighting five outstanding professionals whose leadership, expertise, and perspective continue to drive innovation in legal tech and eDiscovery. The series recognizes the impact of women across the organization, leaders who are not only delivering results for clients but also helping mentor the next generation of professionals in a fast-evolving industry.
Let us introduce you to our first spotlight: Katie Peloquin, Client Director. Katie brings her own unique experience, insights, and approach to the work she does every day. In the following questionnaire, she shares more about her career journey, what inspires her in the legal tech space, and a few personal perspectives that help shape the way she approaches both challenges and opportunities. Get to know Katie and the story behind her path in eDiscovery.
What led you into eDiscovery, and what surprised you most when you first started working with legal teams?
Honestly, as luck would have it, I just kind of fell into it. I was finishing college – I was an economics major, what are you supposed to do with that, and I was looking to move to a full-time job. I had interviewed for two different positions at the company I was working for, and It just so happens they were relocating their eDiscovery department from NYC. I interviewed and spoiler alert, I got the job! I would say that what surprised me the most when I first started working with legal teams – keep in mind this was 20+ years ago – was their eagerness to learn about eDiscovery. We got to do that together.
As a woman in a male-dominated field, what perspective or strength has helped you navigate challenges and earn client trust?
I always joke that I’m the personality hire, which makes me more relatable. Mixed with my empathy and understanding, persistence, organization, industry knowledge, and experience, I feel like clients appreciate my ability to relate, attention to detail, and efficiency. My fortitude to get things done also helps.
After years in this fast-moving industry, how has your leadership style evolved and how does that help your clients today?
It helps that I have an amazing team and being able to coach and to help them evolve as Project Coordinators and Project Managers in a field where technology and the industry demand continues to change is gratifying. Being able to foster that environment of education, it trickles down to the clients, helping them be able to streamline their review using the latest technology and AI learning.
Can you share an example of a matter where your strategy made a measurable difference?
What was the challenge?
An extraordinarily large review set with minimal time to do it in and a client who was green to eDiscovery. The data set was over 20 million documents and the deadline for production was a month away.
What did you change?
After a call with the client, we decided to throw the gauntlet of tools we had at time time at the dataset to help reduce it. Working with the client, we applied search terms, date filters, CDS Vision, and email threading to the dataset before promoting the remaining documents to review to use an Active Learning workflow.
What was the outcome?
We were able to reduce the dataset from over 20 million documents down to a review size of around 2 million documents. Being able to use CDS Vision was a huge help removing junk, identifying potentially privileged and PII documents, and creating a communication analysis streamlined document review. From there we worked with our Managed Review team to get first level review completed so the client could do a privileged review and get the production out before the deadline.
What do you wish you had known earlier in your career, and what advice would you give women entering legaltech today?
Where do I start? Just kidding. I was lucky that I had some great women mentors to help get me to where I am today. I wish I would have spoken up and let my voice be heard sooner. The advice I’d give to women entering legal tech today is to find a mentor and learn everything you can. Be heard. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
We hoped you enjoyed getting to know our Client Director Katie Peloquin for our Women’s History Month series spotlighting our female tech experts. Stick around to meet more women driving real results at CDS.
