SPi Legal Adds Top Industry Consultants to Its Team

E-Discovery Leader Now Has Consultants Coast-to-Coast to Best Meet the Needs of Its Clients


AUSTIN, TX--(Marketwire - February 4, 2008) - SPi, a global leader in Business Process Outsourcing and a leading provider of electronic discovery and document coding services to the legal market, announced the addition of three top industry consultants: Barbara Deacon, Mark Lieb, and Scott Ripps. With the addition of these three industry veterans, SPi now has broad geographic coverage for both consulting and onsite work.

Barbara Deacon brings to SPi more than twenty years of litigation support experience. She has been a large-firm litigation support manager and an electronic discovery consultant on high-profile cases. She specializes in litigation process engineering, SPi Data Analytics, training, custom development, trial preparation, and litigation contingency planning for law firms and corporate law departments, and she is a frequent continuing legal education speaker and writer on issues about managing the total cost of electronic data discovery. Ms. Deacon holds a BS from Northwestern University and is based in New York.

Mark Lieb has worked for nearly the past decade providing electronic discovery and litigation support consulting to law firms and corporate law departments. He specializes in case-specific and operations practices for litigation support infrastructure, case lifecycle technology, and standards for handling ESI (electronically stored information). Mr. Lieb's two books, Litigation Support Department and Litigation Support Technical Standards, include CD resources and are a mainstay to hundreds of law firms. In addition, he is a co-founder of the nonprofit Litigation Support Vendors Association (http://www.LSVA.com), an online forum and resource of expert industry advice. Mr. Lieb holds a Bachelors degree from Indiana University, an MA in Computer Science from Depaul University and is based in Chicago.

Scott Ripps brings more than ten years of experience to managing complex litigation support and technology projects. Mr. Ripps specializes in data conversion, document and data review, production consulting, and he is an expert in leading litigation support tools, from the perspectives of both hosting operations and end users. His abilities to merge technology with process and to communicate with both technical and non-technical teams have been integral to his success. Throughout his career, Mr. Ripps has worked for litigation support service providers in such roles as director of hosting services, director of project management, and director of operations. He also was a project manager for a company managing e-commerce initiatives for Fortune 500 companies. Mr. Ripps holds a Bachelor's degree from Duke University and is based in Atlanta.

Known for its thought leadership in electronic discovery, the addition of these three talented professionals allows SPi Legal to significantly expand its services in onsite data preservation and collection, litigation contingency planning, continuing legal education, and SPi Data Analytics. "We are proud and honored to have Babs, Mark and Scott join us at SPi. Each adds to the brain trust at SPi and can provide the experience and consulting skills that our clients have come to expect from us," stated Chuck Kellner, VP of Consulting and Project Engineering.

About SPi Legal

SPi Legal is a division of SPi and offers the full range of electronic discovery and litigation support services, including document coding, online repository hosting, managed review, and onsite electronic data discovery collection and preservation, strategic and tactical consulting to law firms and corporate law departments. SPi Legal is consistently a top-ranked electronic discovery provider. SPi, owned by ePLDT, is a leading full-service BPO provider with offices and facilities across North America, Europe, and Asia. Together with ePLDT's Ventus Group, the company has 11,650 employees delivering a wide range of knowledge-based outsourcing solutions to diversified markets. SPi consistently improves operating efficiency, lowers costs and helps to strengthen the competitive position of more than 150 customers.

Contact Information: Contact: Elizabeth Nolan SPi Washington, DC (202) 449 7692 Carolyn Depko Edge Legal Marketing Middletown, NJ (732) 533 5491