For Société Générale’s Jeff Nass, Data Is Only the Beginning

When Jeff Nass started law school, he didn’t yet know how his interest in technology and data risk would fit into his legal career. Then, a classmate introduced him to Alon Israely and Brian Schrader of Business Intelligence Associates. “They were helping large companies organize themselves so that when complex litigation hit, they would know where the data that could be potentially responsive to that litigation was stored,” Nass explains.

Initially, Nass drew an immediate connection to his previous work as a technologist, which had likewise involved the management of information assets. Soon, he found himself immersed in the dynamic world of electronic discovery (eDiscovery), where he remains to this day. Amidst the discipline’s evolution, Nass continues to thrive on the challenges that arise when data intersects law, including in the context of his current role as director and counsel for eDiscovery at Société Générale, a multinational French bank in the US.

Before landing at Société Générale (SG), Nass built his experience through a series of in-house roles in the pharmaceutical and financial services industries. “I was second-in-command around the creation and management of the eDiscovery program at Forest Laboratories, then head of the global eDiscovery program at Boehringer Ingelheim,” Nass says. “At Deutsche Bank, I helped to extend the existing eDiscovery program in a variety of ways. My role at Société Générale is quite like the one I had at Boehringer, except that my role here is focused entirely on litigation risk in connection with the Americas.”

Nass may have a regional scope when it comes to litigation, but his role requires him to think about data on a global scale. “One of the primary objectives for my role was to advance the eDiscovery effort focused on litigations facing the Americas—and to work closely with our colleagues at [the] head office in Paris to leverage my knowledge and experience to help the rest of the SG world.”

Consistency has been the name of the game for Nass, who credits his collaborators and predecessors within the Bank with laying the foundation for him to further streamline operational processes. Facilitating his efforts, Nass has a counterpart in Europe who advises on litigation practices abroad, as well as a dedicated eDiscovery operations team that oversees daily tasks.

“Jeff has always had an intuitive understanding of data and technology, and their interplay with case needs and risk,” says Sirisha Gummaregula, chief operating officer at QuisLex. “His ability to quickly and efficiently streamline eDiscovery and mitigate risk overall is unique and hugely impressive.”

The director notes that an industry-wide focus has been on striking the right balance between data retention and data disposal. “A common practice among regulated firms has been to establish records management programs focused on retaining data for a minimum amount of time,” Nass says. “Over time however, this focus on retention can sometimes create a bias to over-retain data,” he adds. “But as the wider market has been moving closer to actively managing the lifecycle of data and to responsibly destroy data because of the demands of cyber risk management and data privacy, among other reasons, eDiscovery programs in the market are evolving as well.”  

“Given these competing pressures, eDiscovery practitioners are taking additional affirmative steps upfront to protect potentially relevant data, which can be a challenge at the beginning of a case,” Nass says. “You work to close the gap between casting such a broad net that you’re effectively retaining everything and deferring the application of a legal hold entirely until you know enough to specify what dataset is in fact relevant. Kicking the can down the road may no longer be a viable option, however, because there may be data here today that could be gone tomorrow.”

In the interest of balancing these pressures, Nass coordinates with records management, privacy, information security, IT infrastructure, and other teams at Société Générale to grow his understanding of where sensitive data lives. Using this knowledge, eDiscovery practitioners like Nass have started to consider the eDiscovery implications of emerging data privacy and cybersecurity concerns.

“The evolution of eDiscovery up to this point has been about leveraging data analytics to the reduce the amount of data to be reviewed,” Nass notes. “The upcoming evolution is to think about ways to reduce the amount of data companies are sending to outside service providers in an effort to help minimize cyber risk.”

To navigate that next evolution, Nass will continue to join forces with his colleagues across the Bank. “My hope for the future is to leverage technology that will bring the workflows used by various teams into one so that we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet,” he says. “It’s a team effort to make these things happen, and I’m very thankful that the organization has not only trusted me to lead the eDiscovery charge, but also given me the support that I’ve needed to be successful.”