In the vast information landscape, Information Governance and eDiscovery are still a relatively new frontier. Today, the proliferation in the amount of data being generated and the way it impacts the legal process is witnessed by everyone. The real-time nature of Information Governance and eDiscovery can play a crucial part in critical business insight, compliance, and successful legal outcomes.
To find relevant documents in real-time, this promising technology company assists in the discovery process to develop innovative and cost-effective methods to conduct Information Governance, compliance, and document discovery to understand large volumes of data effortlessly. However, the Information Governance and legal landscape is crowded with many providers. It is critical to demonstrate differentiation. Trust, price, scale, and relevance are critical factors fueling the complexity of challenges. When it comes to identifying the right Information Governance and eDiscovery provider, clients’ need to find the right balance between people, process, and technology.
Headquartered in Washington, DC, Modus is one of the leading companies with a national footprint in the eDiscovery industry. Modus strongly believes that the right culture, work environment, empowerment, and flexibility to deliver the highest quality solutions. The main objective of Modus is to help organization’s assess, strategize and leverage critical business intelligence obtained from people, processes, and data to optimize legal and enterprise-wide business results. Since its inception, Modus has provided exemplary service for 400 law firms and 170 corporate clients. We were amazed at the lack of employee turnover at Modus. There is genuine commitment and trust across all areas within Modus. What we found really suprising at Modus was the compensation structures. The entire Team at Modus shares in the financial benefits the same way as the Leadership Team. The Modus CEO highlighted that: “If you value how you engage and invest in each other to strive for shared goals and values, you will love being here. If not, you will not enjoy it here. Our culture reinforces this binding or separation.”
Three Important Core Values of Modus
The skilled team of Modus believes that core values are the foundation for building a great company. The company consistently tries to live its core values of listening, learning, and leveraging. Executive Chairman and CEO of Modus, Steven Horan states that these core values are understood across all levels and functions of the company. These core values exist and thrive in the context of trust, transparency, empowerment, and respect. These values help clients understand their challenges, develop collaborative solutions, and leverage state-of-the-art technologies to deliver high-quality solutions.
Blending Information Governance and Law with Technology
As an Information Governance and eDiscovery company, Modus specializes in various areas such as Information Management, eDiscovery, discovery intelligence, managed services, and business intelligence. Modus solutions help law firms and corporations plan, execute and maximize their Information Governance and eDiscovery matters individually and collectively, while providing needed intelligence, processing, hosting and related electronic discovery data services at predictable or fixed costs. Using its technology and services, clients can solve their most pressing legal and business challenges, including reduction of risk, privacy, security, compliance, archiving, and eDiscovery. We noted that Modus has a tremendous competitive advantage of being on the “front and back end” of information challenges and compliance.
Modus’ smart collection technology enables clients to tap into all the unstructured data locations, identify relevant data, and maintain an up-to-date index of their information before any data is ever collected. Through cloud technology or on-premise, clients can share their data and access it from anywhere at any time. Moreover, they can find information within seconds, wherever it resides. Modus eliminates the expenses and difficulties of keeping internal information relevant. Modus also partners with some of the most respected Global Enterprises including AWS (Amazon Web Services), Relativity, Venio, BrainSpace, Verizon, Fortinet, NetGovern, and Congruity, among others.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Solutions
AI plays a crucial role in the Information Governance and legal industry by delivering services more quickly at a lower cost and with higher accuracy. Leveraging AI technology, Modus’s Early Case Assessment, Information Governance, AWS Data Lake Technologies, and Risk Management solutions solve real world challenges. The seasoned team of Modus believes that relevance, time, and cost are critical Information Governance and eDiscovery mandates and will continue to be regardless of the technology platform. Modus is well positioned for the long term technology changes taking place before our eyes.
The Versatile Leader with Extensive Expertise and Knowledge
With over 30 years of experience with global enterprises in private and public markets and emerging growth companies, Steven leads sales, operations, technology, and management initiatives to continue the positive momentum and growth of Modus. The transformation of Modus since Steven became CEO is well known within the industry. He completed his education from Wake Forest University in Business and Computer Science. While studying there, he learned foundational components of great decision making, technology, finance, and leadership but also deeply grasped the value of humility, curiosity, and human engagement. “I understood the Wake Forest mandate of Humanie Vitae not because it was a logo, but because it was the way the professors engaged with us,” says CEO Steven Horan.
Being raised in a large Irish and Italian family, the well-versed leader has learned deeply the values of respect, commitment, courage, integrity, grace, hard work, flexibility, and creativity. These qualities influence him greatly and shape his perspective on the value and necessity of constructive human engagement. Steven states, “I firmly believe one of the great leadership challenges of our time is balancing individual, team, Company, community, national, and global engagement in the context of technological, social, economic, and political forces that have the risk of isolating us and minimizing our shared values.”
Diverse Working Experiences
Steven began his career with Price Waterhouse Coopers where he gained valuable knowledge from excellent mentors. Later, the talented leader worked with global enterprises in a broad range of industries. He developed skills in delivering global operations, technology, operating, and financial scale, effective teams, effective governance, and the critical relationship between strategic and tactical execution. He focused on successful emerging technology and service business models for the past 15 years. Steven has raised over $750M of debt and equity capital ranging from emerging technologies to global enterprises. More importantly, even in difficult market conditions, Steven has generated exceptional investor returns and created wonderful opportunities for so many talented individuals and their families. We noted an extraordinarily high level of trust and loyalty toward Steven within all levels of the Modus Team.
Steven believes Modus has the key ingredients for success: the right opportunity, the right people, the right strategy, and the right execution. Information Governance and the legal sectors are undergoing significant structural change. Companies must understand the dynamics, opportunities, and risks to thrive and remain relevant.
Overcoming Challenges with Mentors’ Guidance
Every leader encounters numerous challenges while leading the company towards success. Similarly, Steven has conquered his limitations by having well-known business leaders who have become great mentors to him. He credits his success to his mentors: “I cannot overstate the appreciation and gratitude I have toward people like Dr. Gerald Bell and Bill George. These are amazing individuals who are defining and reshaping leadership at the highest levels.”
When Steven joined Modus in 2015, the Sales, Operations, Technology, and Culture were broken. With help from Gabe Weichman, Matthew Lutterloh, John Crites, and Michael Mills, he was able to turn Modus into a successful company. He further states, “Gabe Weichman has been invaluable in solidifying and expanding our eDiscvovery presence in the market. Matthew Lutterloh has transformed our Operations in terms of quality, scale, and engagement. John Crites has implemented the most scalable, secure, and flexible technology solutions that have ever been deployed in Information Governance and eDiscovery. Michael Mills has accelerated our entrance into Information Governance that will set us apart for many years to come.” We noted that Steven continually focuses his attention on the Modus team in almost every conversation. There is deep mutual respect throughout Modus, especially within the Leadership Team. Steven was quick to highlight that: “you cannot deliver trust in the dining room if it does not exist in the kitchen. Trust is demanded by our clients and must be at the core of how we engage.”
Building a Trustworthy Brand
According to Steven, keys to building a trustworthy brand are the right people, process, and strategy. Along with this, trust is also needed. Since Modus is a unique blend of highly-refined processes, genuine people and advanced technology solutions, it delivers consistent excellence and relevant solutions for global clients. The company understands the ingredients that are required to be successful in a particular situation and imposes tremendous commitment and constructive engagement. Modus has been investing heavily in the area of Information Governance and supporting Government Agencies that have very large data requirements. In doing so, Modus not only expands its ability to grow the eDiscovery business but play in the much larger Information Governance arena.
