Michael Huber

Michael has supported several Fortune 50 institutions in responding to their highest-risk, cross-border litigations, regulatory inquiries, high-profile data breaches, and internal investigations. This experience has led him to develop custom eDiscovery solutions with clients and law firms to solve complex structured and unstructured data issues using a combination of forensic data analytics, machine learning, Technology-Assisted Review (TAR), and most recently GenAI.

Michael’s prior experience also includes leading assessments of eDiscovery programs, developing future state considerations, and mapping implementation initiatives. He focused on understanding the technical operations of the eDiscovery policies and procedures and utilizing his experience to create go-forward solutions. He has specialized in evaluating, testing, and selecting legal technologies for assessments and implementations, including document and matter management systems, Microsoft 365 (M365), eDiscovery analytics products, and legal hold and ESI collection tools.

Over the last year, he has spoken at several events on the topics of AI, eDiscovery’s response to emerging data sources, and off-channel communication risks for legal and compliance.

Michael’s professional experience:

eDiscovery and Data Analytics

Litigation: Michael has extensive experience in eDiscovery litigation, having worked with clients across a wide array of industries, including financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, telecommunications, and energy. His specialty lies in resolving complex eDiscovery data challenges by harnessing advanced technologies such as TAR, thereby delivering value to clients. Michael’s expertise has resulted in saving clients thousands of hours in review time and millions of dollars by successfully incorporating TAR and machine learning into each stage of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model.

Global Investigations: Oversaw a significant portfolio of internal investigations for a major international pharmaceutical company, supervising simultaneously more than 30 cases with six diverse external legal firms. Michael handled operations across China, Japan, India, the Middle East, Ireland, the UK, and the U.S., ensuring seamless collaboration and communication. He executed standardized procedures in data collection, processing, review, reporting, and quality control to ensure compliance and efficiency across the geographies.

C-suite Investigation: Engaged by a Fortune 50 company’s legal team to lead a pivotal investigation into executive-level financial misconduct amid SEC allegations. Michael directed the eDiscovery initiative, efficiently managing the production of over 2 million documents for SEC review. He combined eDiscovery and analytical skills by integrating flight logs, financial expenditures, calendar schedules, text communications, and email correspondences to construct comprehensive fact sheets for over 600 executive journeys.

Data Breach: Led a team of 35 professionals in executing a comprehensive response to one of the largest cyber breaches in entertainment history. This complex task involved the acquisition and analysis of over 4,000 compromised laptops and servers. Michael directed the recovery of critical data lost during the attack and ensured its secure reassembly on newly deployed devices, fortifying the organization’s data infrastructure and resilience. Michael also worked closely with the FBI to provide key artifacts from the collected devices to determine the source of the breach.

Regulatory Investigations: Managed multiple regulatory inquiries for a prominent U.S. bank, assisting them navigate a complex compliance landscape. Over a five-year period, he collaborated closely with the bank’s IT and legal departments to export and consolidate structured data from nine distinct sources, encompassing a decade’s worth of transactional data and payment history. Through his efforts, Michael produced over 1 billion records of structured data, transforming them into a unified, government-approved format, which was pivotal in enabling outside counsel and the bank to reach a favorable settlement with regulators and facilitating effective remediation work.

Information Governance

Data Separation: Directed a large-scale data separation initiative for a critical divestiture and acquisition that served three major life sciences’ clients. The project entailed processing and indexing hundreds of terabytes of data sitting on the Seller’s servers to ascertain accurate file-level ownership. Employing a blend of sophisticated analytics and robust client governance tools, Michael ensured the seamless migration of data to the correct entities with 99.9% accuracy. Any ownership uncertainties in the remaining 0.1% of data were promptly rectified within 24 hours.

M365 and Archive Optimization: Conducted a comprehensive assessment of a large global wealth management firm’s M365 environment, evaluating its connections to various disparate data sources to establish a transparent data lineage essential for legal hold purposes. He scrutinized the integration of their new legal hold tool with M365 and assessed the firm’s utilization of Microsoft Purview in conjunction with their legacy email archiving system. Developing an actionable strategy, Michael provided recommendations for eDiscovery best practices, facilitating the disposal of obsolete data in the legacy archive while implementing measures to reduce new data accumulation across 36 data sources.