About Us
About Us
SMI Aware provides litigation grade discovery and intelligence from publicly available online sources. Law firms, insurance carriers, corporations, and government agencies rely on our work to identify, document, and analyze social media and other open source information that may impact credibility, claims, timelines, and case strategy.
Founded in 2011, SMI Aware was built to address a growing gap in modern discovery. As social media became a significant source of evidence, legal teams often relied on information that was collected informally, inconsistently documented, and difficult to defend when challenged.
SMI Aware was created to bring professional discipline to this process.
Today, our full time, US based analysts review every matter and document findings using a structured discovery methodology designed specifically for legal and investigative use. Our reports transform unstructured online activity into organized, defensible findings that legal teams can rely on when the stakes are high.
Because in legal matters, how information is collected and preserved matters as much as what is found.
Founder’s Perspective
SMI Aware was founded in 2011 to serve the background discovery industry, at a time when social media and public web content were becoming increasingly relevant to employment, compliance, and risk decisions.
Very quickly, it became clear that the same information carried even greater weight in legal matters, where credibility, context, and documentation are not merely helpful, but determinative. Attorneys, insurers, and investigators were relying on information that mattered, yet it was often collected inconsistently, poorly documented, and difficult to defend under scrutiny.
From the beginning, my focus was not simply on finding information. It was on building a process that legal professionals could trust.
Before founding SMI Aware, I spent years working in environments where quality, consistency, and process discipline were non-negotiable. I was trained in Six Sigma, the Toyota Production System, and the Alcoa Business System. In those settings, outcomes were only as reliable as the processes behind them, and undocumented or inconsistent work was unacceptable, regardless of intent.
Those principles became foundational to SMI Aware.
We built our technology and analyst workflows around controlled processes, repeatability, documentation, and continuous improvement. Every step, from intake to reporting, is designed to reduce variation, limit subjectivity, and ensure that work can be explained and reviewed later, not just delivered quickly.
At the same time, we recognized that process discipline alone is not enough in legal matters. Judgment matters. Context matters. How information may be challenged matters.
That is why SMI Aware has always been designed to support legal use, not generic monitoring or automated data collection. Our work assumes scrutiny. It assumes opposing counsel. It assumes that findings may need to be defended long after the initial review.
SMI Aware does not sell raw data or automated outputs. We rely on our in-house team of professional, full-time analysts supported by purpose-built technology and disciplined operating procedures. Everything we deliver is designed to be defensible, explainable, and fit for legal use.
More than a decade later, SMI Aware is trusted by law firms, insurers, corporations, and government agencies because we take the same approach on every matter: disciplined process, documented methodology, and respect for the stakes involved.
-Chris Randall,
Founder and Chairman, SMI Aware
A Note from the CEO
When attorneys evaluate vendors, they are not just evaluating a service. They are evaluating risk.
They are asking whether the work will hold up under scrutiny, whether it can be explained to a partner, a client, or a court, and whether relying on it will ultimately make their job easier or harder.
I understand that mindset because I come from it.
I began my career in Big Law, where precision, judgment, and documentation are baseline expectations. Later, as General Counsel and then President of a large operating business, I sat on the other side of the table, responsible not only for legal outcomes, but for the operational, financial, and reputational consequences that flow from them.
In those roles, I learned that information is only useful if it is reliable, contextualized, and defensible. Raw data, screenshots, and automated outputs may be easy to obtain, but they often create more questions than answers when decisions matter most. I have seen firsthand how poorly sourced or poorly explained information can complicate litigation, undermine credibility, and create unnecessary exposure.
That perspective directly informs how we operate at SMI Aware.
We do not treat social media and public web information as casual research or background noise. We treat it as evidence that must be handled with restraint, judgment, and care. We assume that what we deliver may be challenged by opposing counsel, questioned internally, or revisited months or years later. That assumption shapes how scope is defined, how analysts are trained, and how reports are structured.
SMI Aware is not a technology-first company. It is a legal-use company supported by technology. Our analysts are professionals, not button-pushers. Our processes are designed to be explainable and auditable. Our reports are written for attorneys because attorneys are the ones who ultimately rely on them.
As CEO, my responsibility is to ensure that our company standards match the standards of our clients. The work we deliver should make it easier for you to stand behind your decisions, not harder to defend them. It should reduce risk, not shift it. And it should integrate naturally into how legal work is actually done.
If you work with SMI Aware, you are working with a team that understands the stakes, respects the profession, and approaches every matter with the seriousness it deserves.
— Josh Janow
Chief Executive Officer, SMI Aware