ERIC SANCHEZ.

The operator behind a $1.25 billion settlement — and the technologist who spun a law firm’s systems into a patented software company.

Employee Number Seven

When Eric joined the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin in 2000, the firm needed an office manager. What it got was a systems builder. He replaced what he called the firm’s “binders of paper” with the first software that would become its technological platform — the engine that let a small practice handle hundreds of calls a week and take the cases other firms passed on. He would go on to manage nearly every department in the firm and architect the core systems it still runs on today.

The Firm He Helped Build

The firm Eric helped run is, by independent measures, among the largest in North Carolina: more than $2 billion recovered for over 73,000 clients since 1997, 60-plus attorneys across 14 offices, and repeated recognition as one of the state’s fastest-growing firms — the only law firm named to the Triangle Business Journal’s “Fast 50” two years running. Eric did it in one of the hardest environments in the country to grow a plaintiffs’ practice: a contributory-negligence jurisdiction.

The $1.25 Billion Claims Process

In In re Black Farmers Discrimination Litigation — the case that delivered a $1.25 billion settlement to more than 18,000 Black farmers discriminated against by the USDA — Eric served as Class Counsel’s point person on data, technology, and the claims process. Claimants were scattered across the country. To reach them, Eric built a system that mapped the latitude and longitude of every claimant against potential meeting sites, putting a meeting within reach of more than 97% of them. He then ran the operation on the ground: 384 meetings in 66 cities across 23 states and Washington, D.C., putting counsel in front of nearly 22,000 claimants in person.

When the government opposed the attorneys’ fee request as routine, Eric filed the sworn declaration detailing the complexity of the work. The presiding federal judge awarded the fees in the full amount requested — a maximum award of $90,835,000, or 7.4% of the common fund — crediting the effort as carried out with professionalism, skill, and diligence. The full public record — the docket, the statute, and lead counsel’s own account — is here.

Witness at the White House

On December 8, 2010, Eric stood in the White House as President Obama signed the Claims Settlement Act of 2010 — the statute that funded the settlement he had spent years helping build. The experience, and the months he spent meeting with legislators and staff to get there, sent him back to school. He earned a Master of Arts in Public Policy and Administration from Northwestern University, which later featured him in an official Alumni Story titled “How a $1.25 Billion Case Led Eric Sanchez to Public Policy.”

The Firm That Spawned a Tech Company

The systems Eric built didn’t stay in one firm. Other firms came to consult, drawn by the platform’s reputation — then wanted the software itself. That demand led to a legal-technology spin-off that commercialized the case-management platform. Eric founded it and served as Chief Product Officer and Chief Innovation Officer, and is a named inventor on 30 U.S. patents spanning marketing analytics, cybersecurity, database management, email routing, and user-interface design. It was, as he describes it, a first of its kind — the only client-intake application in the country with patents both awarded and pending, a technology company created by a law firm.

Marine, Pastor, Builder

Before the firm, Eric served eight years in the United States Marine Corps — enlisting the day he turned 18, graduating boot camp as one of his platoon’s top recruits and its first squad leader, and being honorably discharged as a Corporal. He calls it the accomplishment he’s proudest of. Before that he spent five years as a youth and administration pastor in California’s Silicon Valley. Colleagues describe someone who simply moves: the executive who took a 200-person firm fully remote a week before the state’s stay-at-home order, and who once bleached his hair and sang Billy Idol in the breakroom to make good on a challenge to his team. His tattoo sleeve fills in the rest — five thinkers he admires (Archimedes, da Vinci, Einstein, Gandhi, and Dr. King), entwined with symbols of the patents he holds.

A Father’s Advocacy

Eric’s daughter Grace was sent home as a newborn without a diagnosis, then had open-heart surgery at eighteen weeks for a congenital heart defect. Eric and Grace took her story to the North Carolina Legislature, asking for mandatory pulse-oximetry screening for newborns. In 2013, Governor McCrory signed Senate Bill 98 into law, and Grace was named on the Senate floor when it passed. The screening it requires is now routine across the state.

What People Say About Eric

Written by the People Who Worked With Him.

Colleagues, clients and the people who reported to him — most written while he was still running the firm’s operations, years before Maestro existed. They are on LinkedIn.

Work With Eric

One conversation to map where your firm leaks value — and what an engineered operating system would change.