James F. Dawson is a technology professional with over 20 years of experience in electronic discovery, system security, business transformation services and information management. Mr. Dawson has vast management experience in corporate IT consulting and research, and is known for identification of opportunities for technology based business process improvements.
A proven innovator, Mr. Dawson recognizes and capitalizes on technology efficiencies. Most recently at MetLife, as the Director of Litigation Support and Information Discovery he provided information discovery for MetLife’s in-house counsel within all phases of the discovery lifecycle. He provided identification, preservation, collection, processing, analysis, hosted review, production and presentation to satisfy discovery orders for all regulatory requests and litigation demands of this worldwide insurer and financial services provider. Under his direction, Mr. Dawson’s team managed matters through all phases of the legal technology lifecycle.
Mr. Dawson is an expert in data search, protection, movement and audit. He has pioneered data collection specifications and litigation vendor coordination systems. Mr. Dawson has innovated 'leading practices' in discovery and collection techniques for MetLife.
Mr. Dawson has innovated in compliance, CRM integrations, networking, messaging, presence management, Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) and enterprise information technology transformation. Mr. Dawson is experienced in several areas of industry specific technology compliance including requirements brought about by SEC 17a 3/4, FINRA, NASD 3010/3110, HIPAA, DoD 5015.2, COOP 65, 21 CFR 11, GLBA, TREAD Act and Sarbanes Oxley. Mr. Dawson has significant financial services experience helping firms navigate the substantial changes needed in processes and systems to meet defensible compliance for the banking industry.
Mr. Dawson has been responsible for multi-million dollar technology lifecycles in several industries and verticals. He has completed several innovative hardware/software evaluations and integrations including data preservation security assessments.
Mr. Dawson has been responsible for technology design in collateralized loan obligation systems (CLOs), mortgage securities systems, equity research systems, Customer Relationship Management technologies (CRM), risk management systems, knowledge integrations and data visualizations. Mr. Dawson has sold and led multi-million dollar technology infrastructure engagements, and has been in charge of large groups of engineers developing fixed income use cases and web-distributed credit products.
Mr. Dawson has managed teams of more than 60 technology professionals and has a record of accomplishment in successful customer relationship and in delivering commerce through content management solutions and wireless distribution channels. He has managed several profitable projects in the Financial Services industry, including such notable clients as Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Chase, Lloyds, and Merrill Lynch. His responsibilities also involved significant clients in Travel (Virgin Airways, British Airways and Delta Airlines, Boston Coach) and in the retail industry (Coca Cola, Kenneth Cole).
As Director of Litigation Support Operations for the compliance and Legal departments at MetLife (with 300 in-house counsel and 100 Litigators) Mr. Dawson managed thousands of responsive data collections for more than 500 annual matters in litigation and FINRA and SEC regulatory requests. He billed and appropriated review attorneys, complex search, legal hold and data management, along with data processing for lower cost in expensive eDiscovery areas such as contracted attorney review within hosted review vendor systems.
Mr. Dawson manages and directs more than 2,000 ESI preservations or collections annually from pools of petabytes of corporate assets including email audits and apply legal hold to satisfy preservation requirements and other obligations of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). He manages extensive matter workload for corporate counsel and trains support staff and internal corporate business clients in the use of case management/hosted review systems.
He has been responsible for annual budgets of more than $15 million dollars and has dispersed more than $5 million dollars annually to eDiscovery vendors. He has instituted vendor cost avoidance/savings of more than $1 million dollars each year through innovative service level credits and avoided unexpected costs by negotiating improved case level pricing for services provided by hosted review vendors.
Mr. Dawson lowered overall corporate counsel costs by hiring and training critical search associates, reducing search costs and providing more matter-level control over result set size, an important factor in reducing the overall cost of the "discovery to response" lifecycle. He instituted risk mitigation with litigation support vendors and stream-lined IT Risk acknowledgement approvals. He managed and directed an increase in Privilege Search effectiveness with review vendors and facilitated standard priv template for productions.
Mr. Dawson has a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Colorado and a Masters in Management of Technology from Polytechnic University. He has taught networking, technology and communication innovation as a university professor at New York Institute of Technology. To learn more about Mr. Dawson, please see www.JamesDawson.us.