Click to enlargeMartin Felsky
Martin Felsky is Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Commonwealth Legal. Under Martin’s leadership, the company has experienced exponential growth and change. Since its inception in February 2000, Commonwealth Legal has grown to six offices across Canada, with more than 85 full-time employees and nearly 100 contract key-word coders. He is an authority and provides counsel on the effective use of automated litigation support and strategic electronic discovery. Martin has been involved in a number of large, complex e-discovery projects involving data, parties and lawyers from around the world, in a combination of civil, criminal, regulatory and investigative proceedings. He has worked for the European community investigating a bank’s worldwide operations, contended with multiple lawsuits against a large telecommunication company and another against a North American-based automotive supplier. Martin has also been retained as an e-discovery advisor to an international arbitration to facilitate the document discovery process. Prior to Commonwealth Legal, Martin was the Founder and Director of Canada’s leading legal technology consulting firm Integer/Actif; he provided advice and support on technology planning, information systems implementation and education. Before his role at Integer/Actif, Martin was a research lawyer and Legal Technology Counsel at McCarthy Tétrault for seven years. Martin has been a member of the Judges Technology Advisory Committee of the Canadian Judicial Council since its establishment in 1987 and is vice-chair of its subcommittee on Evidence Standards. He is also a charter member of the Sedona Conference Working Group 7, working on a national standard for electronic discovery. He participated in the Electronic Discovery Committee of the Task Force on the Discovery Process in Ontario, which drafted the Ontario Guidelines on Electronic Discovery (October 1995). Martin holds a law degree and a doctorate in English from the University of Toronto and remains active as an educator by working closely with the National Judicial Institute, the Canadian Bar Association and the Advocate’s Society. He was an instructor in the MBA program at Concordia University in Montréal for three years, teaching Business Law and Ethics, as well as designing and teaching a course in litigation support for paralegals at the Humber Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning in Toronto.