Outside-In

Hosted by IST Management

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Oct 2026

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IST Management Services, the US's largest independent privately held IFM. For the past 20 years, the Process Outsourcing industry has changed dramatically. This podcast is about those people affecting that change and to provide a view inside the decisions that are being made to ensure that companies and law firms are receiving the latest and greatest support when outsourcing their office support services.

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October 12, 2026Episode 3634 min

Who Answers the Phone at 2 AM? Redefining the Technology Partner

Somewhere along the way, managed technology services forgot about people. As providers chased margin and traded hands between private equity owners, the personalized service clients actually valued became the exception instead of the rule. In this episode, Matthew DeCurtis, Vice President of Business Development at IST joins host Brad Burgess to make the case for a different model built on ownership continuity, hospitality, and outcomes rather than overhead. Matt draws on 25 years in the industry to explain what real partnership looks like after the contract is signed: the team who answers the phone at 2 AM, the report waiting Monday morning s tating everything was handled, and the account people who know your culture so well your own employees think they work for you. He digs into why he hires for empathy over the perfect resume, how AI accelerates his technologists instead of replacing them, and what the certifications every provider rattles off actually mean for the security of your most sensitive data. The throughline is a challenge to every technology buyer: stop settling for reactive help desks, and find the partner planning years past your contract , making sure you're never left behind. If you've ever wondered who's really looking out for your organization when the alarm goes off at 2 AM, this conversation is for you. Key Takeaways : The industry optimized people out of the equation. As providers chase margin, the personalized service clients valued has become the exception. Matt's model puts the people experience and hospitality back at the center. Ownership continuity is a buying signal. Every private-equity turn brings new tools, new leadership, and lost tenure. A stable, single-owner provider protects the tribal knowledge and rapport built with your team over years . Real partnership starts after the contract. The honeymoon of the sales process means little. Partnership is who answers the phone at 2 AM and who owns the outcome, then hands you a Monday-morning report that says it was already handled. Culture fit isn't accidental. The best providers embed so well your own employees think they work for you. That comes from research, the right staffing, and matching a client's core values on purpose. Hire for empathy, teach the technology. Chasing the perfect resume means missing the perfect candidate. Soft skills and bedside manner are inherent; technical skills can be trained on top of them. AI accelerates people, it doesn't replace them. Used well, AI cuts mean time to resolution 25–30% and frees technologists from backend research so they can be more human on the call, not less. Certifications only matter if they're real and owned. ISO 27001, SOC, HIPAA, PCI, FINRA carry weight only when a provider holds and renews them directly, not when a piece of it lives with a subcontractor. Ask for the letters, not the acronyms. Data doesn't stop being sensitive after the case closes. Governance, risk, and compliance apply to data at rest too . If a provider already handles your most sensitive information, the real question is who's protecting the rest. The best partners are proactive, not reactive. In an industry that lives on reacting, the differentiator is advisory that plans five to eight years out — roadmaps, predictable budgets, and a seat on the technology steering committee.

September 10, 2026Episode 4830 min

Who's Keeping Up So You Don't Have To?

Inside the fast-moving world of AI, security, and legal technology. Technology isn't the hard part anymore; it's keeping up with it. In this episode, IST's Jordan McQuown, CIO and CISO, sits down with host Brad Burgess to unpack the fast-moving world of AI in legal technology, and why the pace of change has made a dedicated technology partner more valuable than ever. Jordan walks through the tools already reshaping how legal teams work , image recognition that turns thousands of photos into a searchable population, text analysis that summarizes a 38-page document into a single paragraph, translation across roughly 200 languages, and entity and PII detection that accelerates breach response when notification deadlines are shrinking. But the throughline is bigger than any one tool: with new AI models arriving every few months and regulations tightening constantly, the smartest organizations aren't trying to master it all in-house. They're partnering with experts who make it their job to stay current, keep data secure, and adopt new capabilities the right way , starting small, proving value, and building trust. It's a candid, jargon-free look at where the technology is going, what it can and can't do today, and why the right partner is the one who keeps up so you don't have to. Key Takeaways Keeping up is the real challenge . AI tools evolve on a roughly six-month cycle. The value of a partner i s adapting to change and building it into your process so you don't fall behind. Security comes first. Before any tool goes live, you have to know where the data goes and what the controls are. Safeguarding client data is the non-negotiable foundation, not an afterthought. Compliance is a moving target. Regulatory notification windows keep shrinking, especially across regions. Staying compliant requires a partner watching the rules as closely as the technology . AI augments experts, it doesn't replace them. The strongest use of AI today is quality control and validation. Human judgment still decides how to interpret what the technology surfaces. The right partner has already done the legwork. Rather than building models from scratch, IST taps industry-leading capabilities that give clients enterprise-grade tools without the enterprise-sized investment. Start small and build trust. Adoption works best incrementally: prove the value, get comfortable, and grow both the process and the trust in the technology over time. Real, practical use cases already exist. Image recognition to narrow massive image sets, text analysis for sentiment and document summaries, translation across ~200 languages, and PII detection to accelerate breach response. The biggest game-changer is access. Bringing enterprise-level data capabilities to organizations of every size is where the real advantage is headed.

July 21, 2026Episode 4738 min

Seen and Heard: What True Client Partnership Actually Looks Like

How IST turns vendors into partners and lets clients focus on their own work. When the contract is signed, most vendors hand the client off and disappear. R ella Cesarone , Account Executive on IST's litigation support team, makes the case that this is exactly where the real work begins. Drawing on more than a decade in eDiscovery and litigation support, she shares how the best partnerships are built after the sale with constant communication, hard conversations handled honestly, and the kind of transparency that takes fear off the table when data explodes and deadlines hit. She and host Brad Burgess get into what it actually takes to earn a client's trust: building escalation paths that account for real life, documenting a client's philosophy in a playbook so no one's left guessing, bringing in the right experts at the right moment, and pushing back when saying "yes" wouldn't serve the client. They also tackle the AI conversations every legal team is having now, and why the goal is never the technology, but letting clients focus on advocating for their own clients and getting the work done. It's a candid look at why great partners don't just deliver a service; they make clients feel seen, heard, and never left behind. Key Takeaways: The real work starts after the sale. Signing the contract is the beginning, not the finish line — delivering on what was promised during the sales cycle is where partnership is actually proven . Client fear comes from silence, not bad news . Most anxiety stems from not knowing where things stand. Over-communicating — even a "still looking into it" update — keeps fear off the table. Transparency beats having every answer. Clients don't expect you to know everything instantly; they expect honesty about what you don't know and confidence that you'll bring in the right expert who does. Stay nimble and bring in the right voice. Knowing when to loop in a subject matter expert — forensics, managed review, court reporting — serves the client better than stretching beyond your lane. Build escalation paths around real life. Clear, documented "if you can't reach me, here's who's next" plans reassure clients they're the priority, even when people are out or pulled away. Playbooks eliminate guesswork. Documenting a client's philosophy, workflow, and contacts means anyone can step in and deliver smoothly — and gives the client more control and visibility, including over what they're billed. QBRs should be a two-way conversation. The most valuable review isn't a status report; it's a shared evaluation of the partnership, with real listening so you don't miss the one thing the client's been asking for. A good partner pushes back. Saying "yes" to everything isn't service. Naming the risks and offering alternatives — then respecting the client's call — is what consultative partnership looks like. AI is a tool, not a replacement. The question is never what the technology can do, but what the client is trying to accomplish — and whether the tool actually gets them there. It's the partner's job to remind clients what's possible. Clients are too busy to track every service you offer; surfacing the right capability at the right moment is on you, not them. The goal is letting clients do their job better. Everything — collaboration, proactivity, risk management, transparency — exists so clients can focus on advocating for their own clients and getting the work done.

June 16, 2026Episode 4630 min

From 6 Million Documents to Doable: How AI and Managed Review Changed Everything

When Sidney Lampton Morris, A ssociate A ttorney at Watkins & Eager, received what she thought would be a one-terabyte document production, she had no idea it would grow to six terabytes, span 22 mirror-imaged devices, and contain over six million documents. In this episode of Outside IN, Sidney walks through how IST's managed review team, AI-powered analytics, and relentless communication transformed an impossible workload into a manageable case strategy, ultimately reducing six million documents down to 20,000 actionable files. But beyond the numbers, Sidney shares what it actually felt like to hand over control, trust a partner she had never worked with at that scale, and come out the other side with her case, her sanity, and her marriage intact. If you have ever stared down a document production and wondered how you are going to get through it, this conversation is for you. Key Takeaways: Data volume is no longer a size problem. It's a strategy problem. When Sidney's case grew from one terabyte to six overnight, the answer wasn't more attorneys or more hours. It was a smarter approach to what actually needed to be reviewed before anyone looked at a single document. AI doesn't replace human judgment. It protects it. IST's managed review team used AI to reduce six million documents to 20,000 actionable files. But humans validated every step. The technology made the work possible. The people made it defensible. Control isn't about doing everything yourself. Sidney never stopped feeling in control of her case. Not because she reviewed every document, but because her partner communicated constantly, asked the right questions, and never let her feel like she was flying blind. The front -end conversation changes everything. Sidney's biggest reflection was that more communication upfront would have made the entire process even more efficient. The best eDiscovery partnerships are built on information sharing, not just service delivery. This isn't just a civil litigation problem. Criminal defense attorneys are receiving complete device dumps with no roadmap and no resources to manage them. As data volume grows, the ability to review it isn't just an operational challenge. It's a justice issue.

May 12, 2026Episode 4536 min

Stop Reacting to Litigation: Save Money Before the Case Starts with IST's Discover-E

Most companies don't think about eDiscovery until they're already in trouble. But according to 30-year industry veteran and Managing Vice President Ed Fiducia, the organizations getting crushed by discovery costs aren't losing because of bad lawyers or bad technology. They're losing because nobody asked the right questions before the case ever started. In this episode of Outside -IN , Ed breaks down the real cost of reactive data management, why AI is a powerful tool that still requires human judgment to be defensible, and how proactive information governance is the single biggest lever legal teams have for controlling spend. From a $10 million paper database built in 1993 to the pattern-matching realities of modern AI, Ed brings 30 years of hard-won perspective to a conversation every GC, litigation partner, and legal ops leader needs to hear. If your organization is sitting on unmanaged data and calling it a storage problem, this conversation will change how you see it. eDiscovery starts long before litigation does. The most expensive discovery mistakes happen years before a case is filed, when companies are ignoring data retention policies, hoarding outdated information, and operating without a clear picture of where their data actually lives . Cheap storage is creating expensive legal problems. Because storage costs have dropped to almost nothing, companies are keeping data long past its useful life. That ignored data doesn't disappear when litigation hits. It becomes discoverable, and it becomes your liability. If you don't have a data map, you don't have a strategy. Before a single document is collected, every legal team should be able to answer two questions: where is our data being stored, and where is it being generated? If you can't answer those, you're already behind. AI is a pattern matcher, not a lawyer. AI is delivering real cost savings in eDiscovery by helping teams cull large data sets faster and more efficiently. But it cannot understand context, nuance, or intent on its own. Human judgment is still required to make the work defensible. The "OK by me" problem is real. A one-line email means nothing without the thread that preceded it. AI can categorize documents but it cannot reliably interpret tone, sarcasm, or the cultural subtext of modern communication. That gap has real legal consequences. Project managers are the actual linchpin. The best technology and the best pricing mean nothing without experienced project managers who are in the data every day, building client relationships and spotting cost-saving opportunities before they disappear. Preserve everything. Process only what matters. The smart strategy is to preserve all potentially relevant data as a cheap insurance policy against spoliation arguments, then be surgical about what actually gets processed, hosted, and reviewed. Not everything preserved needs to be touched. Get your key custodians online in the first 30 days . Waiting until settlement talks break down or a summary judgment motion is denied to dive into the data is one of the most expensive decisions a legal team can make. The first 30 to 60 days of targeted custodian review often tells you everything you need to know about the shape of the case.

April 27, 2026Episode 4523 min

Enhancement, Not Replacement: The Human Side of AI in eDiscovery

Ep. 45: Dive into eDiscovery and AI in our latest podcast episode featuring IST's Senior eDiscovery Project Manager/Sales Engineer Sara Asgur! Listen as Sara shares her journey in the field and the revolutionary ways AI is being utilized to streamline the review process. Discover how AI significantly reduces review volumes, boosts efficiency, and enhances consistency for small to mighty firms. Uncover tools such as machine translation, email threading, and ChatGPT, changing the game for clients. This episode guarantees insights into AI's role in enhancing project management and creating a more dynamic, adaptable service. Tune in for a fascinating discussion that challenges the view of AI as a mere replacement for human expertise.

March 26, 2026Episode 4433 min

The Blueprint for Dependability: IST's Three Pillars for Exceptional Client Services

In this episode, operations leader Mike Horton, Operations Manager, reveals his "blueprint" for transforming nervous new clients into long-term, trusted partners by mastering the critical transition from initial implementation to daily excellence. Drawing on over 27 years of experience, Mike explains how to move past client anxiety by identifying "pain points" and building a foundation of safety through three essential cornerstones: consistency, communication, and unwavering dependability. Get ready to discover Mike 's proactive philosophy , "if it's not broke, break it and find a better way to do it" , and learn how he empowers on-site teams to stay motivated, prevent complacency, and use metrics to tell the "story of what's next" for a client's business. This conversation offers a masterclass in establishing dependability as the cornerstone of a relationship, ensuring that when "things go bump," your clients know you are right there in the trenches with them.

January 14, 2026Episode 4330 min

No Surprises: How Great Implementations Protect People, Trust, and Reputation

Implementations don't fail because of technology—they fail when people feel unheard, surprised, or overwhelmed. In this episode of Outside In , Brad Mitchell, Implementation Manager at IST, pulls back the curtain on what truly makes an implementation successful. Drawing on more than 16 years of experience, Brad shares how a people-first, no-surprises approach helps clients navigate change without disrupting operations, damaging trust, or putting reputations at risk. From managing fear of disruption and hidden costs to building confidence with end users, IT teams, and executives alike, this conversation reveals why the best implementations don't feel like implementations at all, and how leaving people better than you found them is the ultimate measure of success.

December 8, 2025Episode 4235 min

The Method, the Playbook, and the War Room: How Creativity Drives Customer Service in IT

In this episode of Outside-IN, we are talking with Ted Korba, Senior Director of IT Services, about how IT Service Management (ITSM)—including problem, change, and incident management—serves as a necessary "playbook" to bring "a method to the madness" in today's chaotic, technology-heavy corporate world. Ted reveal s how he is transform ing the rigid IT processes into efficient systems, such as mitigating risk through modern change control that utilizes tools like Jira and Slack for chat-based Change Advisory Board (CAB) meetings instead of mandatory sit-downs, making the process "more conducive to everyday work". A core innovation discussed is the "war room" chat, where the team "swarms" major incidents, allowing engineers (the "smart people") to focus solely on fixing the problem while an incident manager handles proactive, standardized communication to the user base via tools like Atlassian Status Page. Crucially, the episode stresses the importance of shifting IT culture from the introverted "techie in the basement" stereotype to a customer-centric service industry that views helping people as a privilege, thereby building user confidence and trust by ensuring the uptime and reliability needed by the company. Get ready to gain insight into leveraging creativity and collaboration to stick to their guns and successfully implement ITSM policies that benefit the entire organization.

November 3, 2025Episode 4133 min

What Are You Afraid Of? The Strategy and Cost of Comprehensive Mail Security

Tune in to the Outside-IN podcast to hear Charles Riddervold, National Director of Operations and Proposal Strategy, who began his career in mail security nearly 40 years ago while screening packages for soldiers in the Army, discuss why the modern corporate mailroom is a crucial vulnerability and a potential entry point for real threats. Discover why mail security has become a massive priority, driven by the immediate danger to people from letter bombs and white powder scares , such as the mid-2010s ricin attack that cost the Department of Justice almost $7 million , as well as newer threats like industrial chemicals and drugs such as Fentanyl. This episode explores the multi-layered process of mail screening, detailing methods that range from simple visual inspection and basic X-raying to deep chemical, biological (CBRNE), and radiological screening, including the logistics of using costly onsite negative pressure air rooms or managing the typical 24-hour lag of offsite screening. Learn how IST leverages advanced technologies like Ray Secure CT scanners and "Smart Tech," which connects local X-ray operators to remote EOD experts, to secure high-risk verticals like healthcare and government contractors. The discussion also covers critical contingency planning, the fact that 90% of mail-borne threats typically arrive via USPS rather than commercial carriers, and the essential creativity required in designing a tailored security plan, focusing on asking clients the pivotal question, "What are you afraid of?" to ensure effective protection.

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