The bridge builder: how one eDiscovery leader learned to put clients first
Alex Khoury wanted to be a history professor. He never imagined becoming a lawyer, let alone the kind the industry is now racing to produce: one who speaks fluent tech.
Customer
Smith Gambrell & Russell
Innovators
Alex Khoury
Partner & Director of eDiscovery
Website
sgrlaw.com
"Fileread gets the lawyers back in touch with their documents sooner. The attorneys who need to know the case get control and understanding of their evidence earlier. That is the whole thing."
Key Highlights
Fileread helps legal teams identify the key documents that matter early, without waiting for full document review to complete.
Attorneys regain direct access to their evidence sooner, allowing them to build understanding and strategy in parallel with review.
Fileread replaces the traditional handoff model, where critical context is lost, with continuous, lawyer-driven insight into the case.
By bringing lawyers closer to their documents earlier, Fileread enables faster, more informed decisions about how to position a case.
You almost didn't become a lawyer.
I really would have preferred to be a history professor. But it's a long road to a PhD, and there aren't a lot of those jobs. I had a three-year-old daughter and I knew I could be a good lawyer. So I went to law school at 30. I went into litigation because I like to win — that appealed to me.
What pulled you into eDiscovery specifically?
One case. A business divorce involving software developers. The other side had altered an email and submitted it as evidence — we proved it. But before the sanctions motion was ever ruled on, the case settled. Not because we'd won. Our clients simply couldn't afford to keep going. We had thrown everything we could think of at the problem instead of sizing it to what the clients could actually sustain. It was a lose-lose. I never wanted to see that happen to a client again.
How does that shape how you work today?
We're thinking, what does this client need to win? Let's give them the options and the costs upfront, so they don't get surprised.
That's the core of what we do. The technology is fun. You can turn over every stone. But is that really what your client needs? Usually no.
You describe yourself as a "bridge." What does that look like?
The lawyers know what they want but don't always know how to convey it to a technical team. And the tech people are brilliant, but they're not lawyers. They can tell you whether something can be done — not always whether it should be done, or why. I spend a lot of time translating between the two sides. That's honestly half the battle inside any firm.
What made Fileread click for you?
A friend mentioned it at a conference. Her point was simple: we don't have a thousand associates to throw at document review, so we need to find the key documents that will position the case. I went home and did the research immediately.
The traditional model: massive document set, contract attorneys spend weeks flagging hot documents, lead counsel gets a folder of highlights at the end. All that context leaves with the contract attorneys. With Fileread, attorneys can be learning about their case while review is still happening.
"Fileread gets the lawyers back in touch with their documents sooner. The attorneys who need to know the case get control and understanding of their evidence earlier. That is the whole thing."
Last question — you wanted to be a history professor. Where does AI fit into that arc?
The Trojan horse was technology. It was a clever contraption, engineered to get soldiers inside walls that couldn't be breached any other way. Nobody saw it coming. Every major innovation in the last hundred years changed how law worked — computers changed it, the internet changed it again, AI is the next turn. It's not doom and gloom. It's just going to look different. The technology always wins. The question is what you do with the time it gives you back.