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The Enigmatic Posse List
About eight years ago, Washington, DC, bankruptcy lawyer Greg Bufithis semi-retired and began participating in large document review projects. After a few, he realized that there was no centralized source for temporary attorneys to learn about these opportunities. Ever the entrepreneur, he created one.
He initially registered a Yahoo! group that grew to about 200 names in a few months and eventually migrated to an independent mailing list originally called “Contract Attorney Job List.” Then one day, Bufithis was reviewing documents and a colleague he did not know approached him and said: “Hey, Kevin at the end of the table sent me and said I should join your posse,” Bufithis recalls. “So a name was born and we created a Web site around The Posse List (www.theposselist.com).”
According to Bufithis, the initial mission of the now 18,000-plus member Posse List was simply to help others find jobs by posting project listings through agencies, law firms and companies looking for temporary attorneys, paralegals and computer forensics personnel.
Bufithis quickly realized that the list could offer more and began establishing relationships with agencies, corporations and online job sites to feed posts into their networks. He personally contacted law firms to obtain background information on projects to provide additional detail to his members. He also began to cover electronically stored information (“ESI”) management and e-discovery conferences.
Going Global
“When we started The Posse List in 2002, our base was contract attorneys in document review and production on large cases that required an army of reviewers called in like a posse at the last minute,” says Bufithis. As technology improved, the need for these large teams declined, but the hunger for additional information and expertise in e-discovery continued to grow.
That growth expanded internationally, and as Bufithis and his team increasingly focused on the impact of ESI management on cross-border litigation and investigations, he launched The Posse List (Europe) and The Posse List (Asia). The E-Discovery Reading Room soon followed. This central location for contract attorneys, vendors and others to learn about ESI, cloud computing and general issues related to modern litigation is part of the network of Web sites that attracts forensics consultants, paralegals, in-house counsel, law firm attorneys, solo practitioners, e-discovery vendors, legal media and others, in addition to the original population of contract lawyers.
The company has four part-time employees that support the online activities of the original site and its sister site, The Posse Ranch, which concentrates on solo practitioners and those seeking to leave the document review market. Four other part-time attorneys drawn from The Posse List help Bufithis cover various law-related conferences around the world, including the Masters Conference, the Georgetown Law CLE Advanced E-Discovery Institute, the IQPC conferences, the Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting and LegalTech, among others. “Any conference in the U.S., Europe and Asia that touches on e-discovery or ESI management, we cover,” he says.
Given the transformation of modern media, The Posse List has evolved from a few names to a broadcast outlet, which, according to Bufithis, responds to almost 200 e-mails per week. He also notes that the organization maintains 90 different job lists that are divided by city, state and region across the U.S., Canada, Asia and Europe, where Bufithis actually lives. His wife works with the European Commission in Brussels and he splits his time between their homes in Washington, DC, and Brussels.
The intercontinental nature of his work allowed The Posse List (Europe) and The Posse List (Asia) to form the core of Project Counsel, a European-based staffing agency that provides e-discovery and computer forensic specialists for law firms and corporations overseas. To allay fears of those staffing firms that pay for U.S.-based project listings, he notes: “We don't touch the U.S. market; my interests are strictly in Europe and Asia.”
More e-Discovery In-house
Based on his coverage of the industry, Bufithis predicts that 2010 will see in-house counsel continue to take back control from outside counsel and manage their ESI prior to any litigation. “The reality is that GCs want to get control of their ESI at the very beginning,” he notes suggesting that the new model will be less of an early case assessment, and more of an early information assessment, which requires that compliant systems be in place before the initiation of any action.
Bufithis can relate. The Posse List is launching a series of profiles to continue to provide insight and perspective on the industry to foster forward momentum. And, he promises, “we'll keep adding to that knowledge base so readers can have a reference point.”
Ari L. Kaplan, the principal of Ari Kaplan Advisors, is a lawyer and a writer based in the New York area. A member of this newsletter's Board of Editors, he is the author of The Opportunity Maker: Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Thomson-West, 2008). He can be reached via www.arikaplanadvisors.com.
About eight years ago, Washington, DC, bankruptcy lawyer Greg Bufithis semi-retired and began participating in large document review projects. After a few, he realized that there was no centralized source for temporary attorneys to learn about these opportunities. Ever the entrepreneur, he created one.
He initially registered a Yahoo! group that grew to about 200 names in a few months and eventually migrated to an independent mailing list originally called “Contract Attorney Job List.” Then one day, Bufithis was reviewing documents and a colleague he did not know approached him and said: “Hey, Kevin at the end of the table sent me and said I should join your posse,” Bufithis recalls. “So a name was born and we created a Web site around The Posse List (www.theposselist.com).”
According to Bufithis, the initial mission of the now 18,000-plus member Posse List was simply to help others find jobs by posting project listings through agencies, law firms and companies looking for temporary attorneys, paralegals and computer forensics personnel.
Bufithis quickly realized that the list could offer more and began establishing relationships with agencies, corporations and online job sites to feed posts into their networks. He personally contacted law firms to obtain background information on projects to provide additional detail to his members. He also began to cover electronically stored information (“ESI”) management and e-discovery conferences.
Going Global
“When we started The Posse List in 2002, our base was contract attorneys in document review and production on large cases that required an army of reviewers called in like a posse at the last minute,” says Bufithis. As technology improved, the need for these large teams declined, but the hunger for additional information and expertise in e-discovery continued to grow.
That growth expanded internationally, and as Bufithis and his team increasingly focused on the impact of ESI management on cross-border litigation and investigations, he launched The Posse List (Europe) and The Posse List (Asia). The E-Discovery Reading Room soon followed. This central location for contract attorneys, vendors and others to learn about ESI, cloud computing and general issues related to modern litigation is part of the network of Web sites that attracts forensics consultants, paralegals, in-house counsel, law firm attorneys, solo practitioners, e-discovery vendors, legal media and others, in addition to the original population of contract lawyers.
The company has four part-time employees that support the online activities of the original site and its sister site, The Posse Ranch, which concentrates on solo practitioners and those seeking to leave the document review market. Four other part-time attorneys drawn from The Posse List help Bufithis cover various law-related conferences around the world, including the Masters Conference, the Georgetown Law CLE Advanced E-Discovery Institute, the IQPC conferences, the Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting and LegalTech, among others. “Any conference in the U.S., Europe and Asia that touches on e-discovery or ESI management, we cover,” he says.
Given the transformation of modern media, The Posse List has evolved from a few names to a broadcast outlet, which, according to Bufithis, responds to almost 200 e-mails per week. He also notes that the organization maintains 90 different job lists that are divided by city, state and region across the U.S., Canada, Asia and Europe, where Bufithis actually lives. His wife works with the European Commission in Brussels and he splits his time between their homes in Washington, DC, and Brussels.
The intercontinental nature of his work allowed The Posse List (Europe) and The Posse List (Asia) to form the core of Project Counsel, a European-based staffing agency that provides e-discovery and computer forensic specialists for law firms and corporations overseas. To allay fears of those staffing firms that pay for U.S.-based project listings, he notes: “We don't touch the U.S. market; my interests are strictly in Europe and Asia.”
More e-Discovery In-house
Based on his coverage of the industry, Bufithis predicts that 2010 will see in-house counsel continue to take back control from outside counsel and manage their ESI prior to any litigation. “The reality is that GCs want to get control of their ESI at the very beginning,” he notes suggesting that the new model will be less of an early case assessment, and more of an early information assessment, which requires that compliant systems be in place before the initiation of any action.
Bufithis can relate. The Posse List is launching a series of profiles to continue to provide insight and perspective on the industry to foster forward momentum. And, he promises, “we'll keep adding to that knowledge base so readers can have a reference point.”
Ari L. Kaplan, the principal of Ari Kaplan Advisors, is a lawyer and a writer based in the
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