John Montana

Mr. Montaņa has been deeply involved in the legal aspects of records management and retention scheduling for fifteen years. He followed an undergraduate degree in Geology with his law degree. During and after law school he worked with Information Requirements Clearinghouse where he supervised legal research for publications addressing commercial information management law, including regulatory compliance, litigation and discovery, and other related legal matters. He subsequently joined BrainCore where he was a consultant on legal issues associated with records and information management, including records retention schedules, emerging issues in content management and the intranet, and the use of advanced storage media. During this time Mr. Montaņa also served clients in his private law practice.

In 1999, Mr. Montaņa formed Montaņa & Associates to provide independent consulting on the full spectrum of legal and other issues in the records management discipline. It was at this time that he started working closely with George Cunningham, a relationship that evolved into Cunningham & Montaņa when he and Mr. Cunningham merged their separate consulting practices in 2002 and that continues today as PelliGroup.

In addition to his writing, research and advisory work on behalf of clients, Mr. Montaņa's efforts over the past several years have focused on researching and interpreting records retention requirements in countries beyond the U.S. to support the PelliGroup's growing base of clients with operations and compliance commitments around the globe.

Mr. Montaņa is a member of ARMA International where he formerly served as a contributing editor on legal issues and continues to serve as a member of their publications committee. He is also a member of the American Bar Association and a frequent local and national speaker on compliance, electronic records, discovery and other records management topics. John has received recent acclaim for his mock trials centering on records management, discovery response, spoliation and related issues.