The architect: how one eDiscovery chief learned to build from the inside out
Sandra Metallo-Barragan told herself she would spend one year in New York. Two decades later, she has helped reshape how an entire city, and now one of its most storied law firms, thinks about eDiscovery.
Customer
Proskauer Rose
Innovators
Sandra Metallo-Barragan
eDiscovery Counsel
Website
proskauer.com
"But the real value goes beyond time savings. The faster you can identify what matters in a case, the better positioned you are to determine next steps. It allows you to develop strategy earlier and advise clients from a more informed position. That is what matters most: not just speed, but how quickly you can turn information into action."
Key Highlights
Fileread produces in seconds what would take legal teams hours to compile manually.
Faster insight means earlier strategy, enabling teams to act before timelines become constraints.
Fileread turns document review into decision-making, not just analysis.
Teams move from information to action faster, operating from insight instead of hindsight.
You started in litigation. What pulled you toward eDiscovery?
For the first eight years of my legal career, I focused on complex, document-heavy commercial litigation and white collar work. I became part of the firm’s inaugural eDiscovery committee and something clicked. What I love about eDiscovery is that it never stands still - super dynamic. Most areas of law, people are citing the same statutes and cases from decades ago. But eDiscovery evolves alongside technology, constantly driving new rules and decisions. You are never in a position where you can say I have got this figured out. You are always anticipating the next move. That is genuinely exciting to me.
You eventually left litigation for the New York City Law Department.
It turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. The Law Department functions like a thousand attorney firms, serving as outside counsel to all ninety city agencies. We had real authority to shape how eDiscovery worked across the entire city for matters the Law Department handles. We built it into its own division. We were at the forefront of TAR, and many of the often-cited TARcases came from matters we worked on at the City. We did not get everything right at the outset, but we learned from that, and built something better as a result.
Then Proskauer came calling.
I said I would never go back to big law. Never say never. The Firm was focused on technology and Gen AI from very early on, with real support from the top down. That matters enormously when you are trying to actually move things forward. If I was going to go back, it had to be exactly this.
How have client attitudes around Gen AI shifted?
Up until maybe six months ago, some clients were still cautious. Now, the conversation has completely flipped. Clients are constantly asking “Are you using Gen AI? What are you using? How are you using it?” That is a complete reversal. Gen AI is not just a litigation tool. It spans practice groups and people's personal lives. Unlike TAR, which clients were not using themselves, GenAI is something they are already engaging with. That has fundamentally changed expectations.
What has the Fileread experience been?
The feedback from the teams has been phenomenal. Initial reactions are often immediate, genuine surprise at how quickly and accurately it produces results. In one instance, a team that had already been through all the documents watched Fileread produce something in seconds that they knew, cold, was exactly right and would have taken them hours to put together. But the real value goes beyond time savings. The faster you can identify what matters in a case, the better positioned you are to determine next steps. It allows you to develop strategy earlier and advise clients from a more informed position. That is what matters most: not just speed, but how quickly you can turn information into action.