Staci Olsen

Staci J. Olsen is Senior Counsel of Electronic Discovery in Baron & Budd’s Environmental Litigation Group, where she specializes in the management of electronic information and people in mass litigation. This skill makes her a critical part of the Group, which focuses on large-scale complex environmental torts. She leads an internal team of four dedicated eDiscovery attorneys and oversees all contract reviewers. She particularly enjoys putting her talents to work for public entity clients facing contamination issues. “Organizing all the evidence to support a client’s case is rewarding because I know that my work provides a tangible result for the client.”

Ms. Olsen has almost 15 years of experience at Baron & Budd overseeing the compilation of evidence necessary to prepare a solid environmental case. Her extensive eDiscovery experience includes management of electronic information, document management, corporate governance, document review, and training of staff and attorneys to make best use of electronic resources. In addition, Ms. Olsen oversees every phase of document management from intake of documents, scanning, coding, searching, bates-stamping, substantive review, production, creation of privilege logs, and identification/development of trial exhibits.

Ms. Olsen also conducts substantive review of client, defendant and third-party subpoena documents for creation of damages models, including all records of expenses and costs associated with contamination, assessments of impacts to natural resources, and any other evidence necessary for damages calculations. She manages in-house electronic discovery and document review teams and works with client and litigation teams to develop keyword searches, issue tags, redact privileged information and sleuth out interesting case facts for use in litigation.

In addition, Ms. Olsen assists public entities with document identification, preservation and tracking, data mapping, document location and storage, custodian interviews, document production, and compliance with public records requests and subpoenas. She also assists in negotiation of electronically stored information (ESI) protocols to be used in litigation, and specifically structures tasks to relieve the litigation burden placed on clients of all sizes, including public entities, agencies, and public employees.

Ms. Olsen is currently serving on a three-person committee that leads the document review for the nationwide aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) litigation and oversees the eDiscovery for the firm’s own numerous AFFF clients. She has worked on environmental matters such as atrazine, perchloroethylene (PCE), trichloropropane (TCP), methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), perfluorinated chemicals (GENX and PFAS), the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB). The PCB case resulted in a $648 million settlement-in-principle in June 2020 for public entity plaintiffs in a nationwide class action against Monsanto related to polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination of stormwater systems. Ms. Olsen also oversaw the eDiscovery for the firm’s JUUL e-cigarette litigation and participated in the MyFord Touch document review.

Ms. Olsen has managed the ESI process for more than 100 of the firm’s wildfire cases. In one case, she led the eDiscovery team that resulted in a $360 million settlement-in-principle on behalf of 23 cities, counties and special districts against Southern California Edison for taxpayer losses caused by the 2017 Thomas and Koenigstein fires, the 2018 Montecito debris flows, and the 2018 Woolsey fire. She is now actively engaged in coordinating, organizing and evaluating discovery pertaining to Hawaii’s Lahaina and Kula fires as Baron & Budd, along with co-counsel, represents Maui County in the devastating conflagration of August 2023.

Since 2021, Staci Olsen has been recognized as one of the Nation’s Top One Percent by the National Association of Distinguished Counsel. NADC is an organization dedicated to promoting the highest standards of legal excellence. Its mission is to objectively recognize attorneys who elevate the standards of the Bar and provide a benchmark for other lawyers to emulate.

Staci Olsen wanted to be an attorney ever since she was a young girl growing up on a ranch in rural Colorado, where the quality of the water and the environment impacted her life every day. Ms. Olsen loves the outdoors and spends her summers fishing in Alaska. She also devotes her spare time to charity work, in particular a local organization dedicated to saving exotic large cats.

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Publications

• Author, “Optimize e-Discovery Production”, American Association for Justice Trial Magazine (August 2021)

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Appointments

• Member, Sedona Conference (eDiscovery) Working Group (2023)
• Participant, Sedona Conference Group eDiscovery Negotiation Training Program (2023)
• Member, Epiq Mass Tort Client Advisory Board (2021-2022)