Document Systems, Inc. (DSI), has added two attorneys and a paralegal to its Legal Department, which is headed by General Counsel, Bill Lambropoulos. The Legal Department is responsible for handling all legal matters involving DSI, from negotiating, drafting, reviewing/revising contracts with its vendors, handling the day-to-day legal affairs of the company, to ensuring that DSI's products are compliant with applicable law. Renee M. Smith, Esq., and Melanie A. Feliciano, Esq., both join DSI as Assistant General Counsel, and Dhiren K. Sharma serves as paralegal to the Department.

Renee joined DSI in September, 2004. Previously, she worked at the AV-Rated firm of Parker Stanbury, LLP, where her practice included residential and commercial property acquisition and sales, financing, and leasing. Prior to that, Renee served as in-house counsel for an industrial supply company. Renee's tenure there required her to focus on real estate transactions, environmental liability issues, and litigation. She was also a former clerk for the Jefferson County Court of Common Pleas in Ohio.

Renee graduated cum laude from St. Bonaventure University with a B.B.A. in Management Sciences in 1993. She received her M.B.A. with an emphasis in Business Computer Information Systems from Hofstra University in 1996 and her J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1998. She is a licensed attorney in California and Ohio (inactive), and is a member of the State Bar of California.

Among her many duties at DSI, Renee will be in charge of DSI's HELOC program, including working with customers to create customized compliant HELOC packages. Additionally, she will develop and maintain the Legal Department's "Compliance" web pages with the goal of providing DSI's customers with instant answers to frequently asked compliance questions.

Melanie joined DSI in October, 2004. Immediately prior to joining DSI, Melanie served as Senior Associate Attorney at the Los Angeles law firm of Swedelson & Gottlieb from 1999 to 2004 where she dealt with a variety of issues affecting homeowners associations. Melanie's work with homeowners associations involved, among many other matters, counseling boards of directors on compliance matters and their fiduciary duties to the association and its members. From 1994 to 1999, Melanie was Senior Associate Attorney at the Los Angeles law firm of Robert Smylie & Associates, where she counseled a diverse client base that included financial institutions and real estate developers with respect to, among other things, regulatory and compliance matters, REOs and real estate development issues. Melanie was also an attorney with the law firm of Fiore, Nordberg, Walker & Woolf-Willis in Irvine, California from 1992 to 1994, and the Los Angeles law firm of Walker, Wright, Tyler & Ward from 1991 to 1992.

Melanie graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas in 1987 with a B.B.A in Accounting. She received her J.D. degree in 1990 from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. Melanie is a licensed attorney in California and is a member of the State Bar of California.

Among her many duties at DSI, Melanie will be in charge of compliance with fair credit issues, Safeguards Rule compliance, purchase money and equity loan programs, and will serve as editor-in-chief of DSI's "Compliance Wizard."

Dhiren also joined DSI in October, 2004. Dhiren, the Legal Department's paralegal, brings to DSI a wealth of experience in the mortgage lending industry. His previous employers include Argent Mortgage Company (formerly the wholesale division of Ameriquest), at which he established an online legal research library and performed comprehensive research on a variety of mortgage compliance issues, from prepayment penalties, late charges, state-specific fees, costs and charges, and high-cost lending requirements. Dhiren also has prior experience in the telecommunications, print media, and real estate industries, where he honed his research, analytical, and writing skills.

Dhiren graduated from Kent State University in Ohio with a M.A. in Political Science and also with a B.A. in Political Science from Hiram College in Ohio. While in graduate school, Dhiren took elective law courses and obtained his Paralegal Certificate from the University of West Los Angeles School of Paralegal Studies, an accredited school of the American Bar Association. To continue his paralegal studies, Dhiren completed research courses at the University of California, Irvine Extension, and at Fullerton College.

In his role as paralegal, Dhiren will contribute his research and analytical skills to DSI and will provide support to the attorneys in the Legal Department.

The addition of Renee, Melanie and Dhiren to DSI's Legal Department is a result of executive management's plan to enhance the benefits already enjoyed by DSI's customers. While continuing to provide federally - and state-specific compliant loan documents, the expansion of the Legal Department will enable DSI to create innovative solutions to industry-wide problems that ensure the safety of its lender-clients' businesses and expand the scope of DSI's services to its customers.