ESI Production Incorporated

Special Report from Claire Pater

As you have seen, on our cover we feature the lovely, multi-talented Claire Pater of ESI Production Incorporated, a forsensic specialist, and self professed computer geek! Read more about Claire and see her new advertisements in BC, AB, SK, and MB. In fact, Claire works in all of western Canada. I am sure you will be more than happy with her services, when you call on this very talented, and very nice lady.

See Claire on ProcessServersCanada.com with her company information.

My life goal was not to become a "capital G" Geek, but I am proud of the title. I started my career as a litigation law clerk for one of Canada's largest law firms. At that time, programs like Summation and Concordance were in their infancy. The more I worked with evidence management systems, the more exciting the technology became for me. Those who know me understand passion is what drives me. Watching evidence management technology develop instilled a yearning in me to understand how these programs worked. Fulfilling this desire required a return to school to study computer programming and databases. This exercise expanded my knowledge and helped me to make computer programs deliver the results my legal professionals were looking for. When I returned to law firms, I found that my new skills enabled me to build custom solutions for firms and that my combination of programming and litigation expertise was truly desirable. I entered the world of training as a means to share what I had learned with other litigation law clerks. I even returned to school once more to complete a Certificate in Adult Learning from the University of Calgary so that I could better facilitate in my training sessions. Ultimately, I discovered that working as part help-desk/trainer/litigation support specialist/programmer/jack-of-all IT applications was simply too many hats for me to wear. Then the onslaught of e-discovery arrived and my whole world changed. My education and work experience finally came together into one neat package. E-discovery offered me the opportunity to work with the technology that I loved and still remain fully within the realm of litigation support. The missing piece was a framework where I could accomplish this. The industry was offering people with little or no credentials at astonishing rates. This is not who I am. I greatly value education and was unable to work with people who did not share this passion. The practice of charging whatever I felt I could get away with didn’t sit right with me either. I soon learned that I needed to found my own company - and so I did. ESI Production Incorporated was started so I could realize my goals and, nearly two years later, I am proud of what has been accomplished. In that short time, ESI has become the only Canadian litigation services bureau to offer in-house EnCase certified forensic computer examiners. We have worked on several projects with one of Canada’s largest oil and gas firms and completed work with one of the world’s seven super-major oil company’s on a Securities Exchange Commission request. We delivered these projects on budget and at less than half the cost of our competitors. I am able to say that I am proud of the work we have done and how my client’s have been treated. I know they are happy not only by what they say but how they return to us again and again as other matters appear. Once ESI was founded, I knew that I had truly become a geek but I needed that "capital G" to feel that I had really, finally, found my niche. I started on the process to obtaining my EnCE (Encase Certified Computer Examiner) certification on the first day I opened my doors and, six months later, I have achieved that goal. I am now proud to call myself a Geek and feel the title was earned through hard work and simple determination. I continue to grow myself but now feel that it is more important to share my knowledge with my staff and clients and focus my efforts on learning how to run and grow a business.

In an effort to give back to the companies and communities that we work in, ESI makes every possible effort perform our project work locally. Using a network of office centres and contract employees, we do our utmost to work and hire people locally. ESI also gives back. We use 5% of our project monies towards refurbishing used computers for local, underprivileged children and whatever is left is donated to children’s charities to provide food, clothing and shelter both locally and internationally.