Kamaka Martin ’04 Takes on New Role with Leading Company in Electronic Discovery

By Kevin Gray

The legal profession has been profoundly affected by the centrality of electronic data to litigation. The Internet, social networking, and cloud computing have impacted the ever-changing landscape of e-discovery and evidence law.

Kamaka Martin ’04 in Recommind office, San Francisco. Photo by Steve Babuljak

Leading the way as the profession catches up with this new reality is Recommind, Inc., of New York and San Francisco. A new member of this innovative team is Kamaka Martin ’04, electronic discovery project manager in the San Francisco office. “The company is revolutionizing the electronic discovery industry with predictive coding,” she says. “I am excited about the prospect for my professional growth here as well as exploring a new city.”

The company developed predictive coding, which uses machine learning to categorize and prioritize documents faster.

Martin’s responsibilities at Recommind include consulting with and managing a portfolio of corporate and law firm clients to meet and exceed court-imposed and regulatory agency deadlines, and to advise on cost-efficient litigation review strategies.

Martin is building on her record of successful client management from her previous two years as client manager at Xerox Litigation Services, New York City. She was selected as a member of the company’s change control board as a result of her involvement in an internal sub-committee created to vet and market a custom workflow for financial institutions responding to regulatory investigations, such as SEC (securities and exchange commission) and CFTC (commodity futures trading commission) subpoenas.

Kamaka Martin ’04 poses with Recommind colleague J. Tripp Hemphill ’99, regional manager of eDiscovery. Photo by Steve Babuljak

Martin says the communication skills so essential to success in the legal field were honed at Lafayette. “The encouragement and facilitation of professor-student discourse prepared me to communicate with senior colleagues in the workplace more confidently and with less trepidation.”

A history and government & law honors graduate who holds a J.D. from Melbourne Law School in Australia, Martin began to build her expertise in client dynamics with research for a thesis on consumer class actions. “Professors Deborah Rosen, John McCartney, and Diane Elliott helped me develop my rudimentary idea into a comparative study of consumer class actions in California and Pennsylvania. It was one of the greatest accomplishments of my academic career at Lafayette.”

Another key lesson for success that she absorbed at Lafayette is the “importance of drawing from the greater community—alumni, faculty, and staff—for mentorship, networking opportunities, and professional guidance.”

Martin took full advantage of the many opportunities to develop leadership skills. She was president of Association of Black Collegians, secretary of Minority Scientists & Engineers, and an assistant for the Oral History Project. “OHP was and is still dear to my heart as it provided an opportunity to apply my coursework in history outside of the classroom.” She notes that Diane Shaw and Kristen Turner “were instrumental, providing guidance, fervor, and patience.

The purpose of the project was to document through interviews the experience of the first female students with the advent of co-education and of African Americans during a time of increased matriculation in the 1970s at Lafayette.

“Once we completed a series of interviews, Amanda Roth ’04 and I co-authored and produced the play We Were Pioneers, in which we showcased the research we conducted over a two-year period,” she says. “It was an exciting and educational experience to meet and interview alumni, professors, and current students, and hear their stories about life at Lafayette both past and present.”

A member of Project Management Institute (PMI), Martin is obtaining her project management professional certification from PMI. She is also a member of New York State Bar Association and Melbourne Bar Association.

Martin is an alumni admissions representative, recently serving as a panel member and interviewing prospective students at a New York Alumni Admissions Interview Day.

“I saw my younger ‘go-getter’ self in those students, specifically in their passion for excelling academically and finding time to participate in a plethora of extracurricular activities,” she says.