Legal technology, eDiscovery/eDisclosure Consultancy

Welcome to the web site of The Maas Consulting Group. We specialise in working with lawyers, IT people and suppliers, negotiating, delivering cost-effective solutions, writing, speaking, listening, hearing, attention to detail, humour, determination, tact and diplomacy, project management, encouraging the best out of people, removing problems, team work and getting things done.

BONG!

(01 February 2019)

Who we are

The Maas Consulting Group is led by Jonathan Maas, a renowned paper and electronic discovery/disclosure veteran with an unparalleled 36 years experience in the field: 28 years in international law firms and eight years in international consultancies. Jonathan speaks and writes on the subject widely and has been involved in developing civil procedure in England & Wales to respond to the modern demands of litigating in the digital age.

Jonathan’s métier is acting as a verbal or written bridge between technical experts and lay people, whether it’s conveying complex technology concepts to a legal audience or explaining matters of detailed legal procedure to IT specialists. He has the ability to unite diverse teams to complete discovery exercises as cost- and time-effectively as possible. In this way he has delivered numerous successful projects for national and international businesses and local and central government. This translates into extremely experienced and empathetic support for lawyers and IT professionals.

His experience of identifying, collecting, classifying and acting on data in the legal environments of investigations and disputes continues to add value in the current environment of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Information Governance and preparations for the UK to leave the European Union (BREXIT). Sound and defensible data management is more important in business than it has ever been.

Jonathan has also researched and implemented computer systems in law firms for the purposes of library and know-how management, litigation support, costs budgeting, collaborative working and more.

At a glance, since 1982 Jonathan has worked at:

Hogan Lovells

Simmons & Simmons

The Litigation Support Company

DLA Piper

Huron Legal

Consilio

Maas Consulting Group

This is the home of the BONG! Jonathan regularly sends out a popular daily email alert (see to the right, his “BONG!”) to subscribers, containing brief snippets of interesting and current discovery, GDPR, legal technology and other news. Every weekend The Project Counsel Group sends out curated selections from that week's BONGs to an international distribution list of some 12,000 individuals, from Swiss paralegals to US judges. Also, every month Jonathan distills the more important eDiscovery news from that month's BONGs into a column - "ICYMI" (In Case You Missed It) - for Legal IT Insider, with a brief note putting each selected item into context.

Although based in London Jonathan has set up and managed case teams in Australia, Bermuda, France and Hong Kong.

Click here for information about some example projects from Jonathan's long career.

View Jonathan Maas'

An informal and occasional selection of recent international eDisclosure / eDiscovery / GDPR / legal IT / data protection / information governance / interesting news / articles collated since 2011 by Jonathan Maas of The Maas Consulting Group in London. Simply pick and click from below.

These links are copied from a recent BONG! We BONG! most work days as an email to subscribers: anyone can email Jonathan@MaasConsultingGroup.com to subscribe / unsubscribe. Subscription is free.

Don't forget to visit our BONG! archive. All our BONG! items are available and searchable (via your web browser). Thought you saw it? Now you can search for it!

BONG!

OpenText buys Catalyst Repository Systems, Inc. (OpenText) https://maas-bong.io/2HLTSL3

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Pulling off the impossible: New Yorker-style cartoons about lawyers that are actually funny (Above the Law) https://maas-bong.io/2HLihAm

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“Change" is a mantra for law firms, but will they tune in? (The American Lawyer) https://maas-bong.io/2HHUGjW

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Risk-aversion and cost top these in-house lawyers’ requirements for eDiscovery (Legaltech News) https://maas-bong.io/2HJcriN

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92% of large businesses gearing up for big data and AI (TechHQ) https://maas-bong.io/2HJvZU9

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ayfie to provide groundbreaking artificial intelligence workflows for the Relativity ecosystem (AiThority) https://maas-bong.io/2HNg3jU

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Machine learning disrupting the law industry [“legal profession”?] (Algorithm-X Lab) https://maas-bong.io/2HKHquY

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Managed review, eDiscovery, and artificial intelligence (ComplexDiscovery) https://maas-bong.io/2HMBilT

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Collaboration is crucial to cross-border investigations in a GDPR world (Legaltech News) https://maas-bong.io/2HL22TW

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Lessons learned for 2019: Spotlighting the top eDiscovery cases from 2018 (Driven) https://maas-bong.io/2HH5Cy7

A selection of upcoming and potentially interesting live webinars / webcasts

05 Feb 1300 ET Data breach discovery: Regain control and save your reputation (ACEDS / BIA) https://maas-bong.io/2R42ITE

06 Feb 1300 ET Benchmarks to increase review efficiency (ACEDS / Catalyst) https://maas-bong.io/2R4sZBp

26 Feb 1300 ET Optimise your eDiscovery spend with business intelligence (ACEDS / Ricoh) https://maas-bong.io/2C35xyU

07 May 1230 BST Evidence and disclosure in 2019 (LexisNexis) https://maas-bong.io/2QJOsPS

02 Jul 1230 BST Cybercrime in 2019 (LexisNexis) https://maas-bong.io/2QJPfQQ

26 Feb 1300 ET Optimise your eDiscovery spend with business intelligence (ACEDS / Ricoh) https://maas-bong.io/2C35xyU

07 May 1230 BST Evidence and disclosure in 2019 (LexisNexis) https://maas-bong.io/2QJOsPS

02 Jul 1230 BST Cybercrime in 2019 (LexisNexis) https://maas-bong.io/2QJPfQQ

Let me know of any upcoming webinar / webcast you'd like to see included in this list.

Still not ready for the GDPR (really??)? Ask us about

www.trust-hub.com, the best tool for assessing, achieving

and maintaining your GDPR compliance

("'one to watch' in 2017": Cyber Security Awards 2017).

By the way, we have noticed that sometimes the links we compile above have registration/paywall information inserted between the referenced site and you. At the time we compose these emails there are no such distractions so we can only assume sites randomly impose registration/payment requirements on links to them. We apologise in advance as my intention is to give you all untrammelled access to this information.

(Incidentally, and for those outside the UK (or in the UK but without televisions), BONG! is a reference to the main evening TV news in the UK, on which headlines are read out between strikes (bongs) of the now-silent Big Ben, the bell in the Elizabeth Tower (renamed from the Clock Tower in honour of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee) at the Palace of Westminster. (You can thank a particularly persistent pedant early on in the life of the BONG! for this rather precise explanation.)

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