Autonomy Extends Linklaters Relationship
May 10, 2011
In August 2009, we published “Autonomy … De Facto Standard for Global Law Firms”. We saw another news item about one of the firms mentioned in that write up, Linklaters.
According to the “Linklaters Selects Autonomy’s IDOL for Enterprise Search Easy Search Interface and Conceptual Search To Boost Productivity at Leading Global Law Firm,” the leading global firm Linklaters is embracing Autonomy’s IDOL technology. IDOL or Intelligent Data Operating Layer is an innovative users-oriented enterprise search platform.
We learned:
In a project spearheaded by Autonomy and longstanding Autonomy partner, Okana, now part of the Realise group, Linklaters selected Autonomy’s IDOL for enterprise search due to its unique conceptual abilities, language independence, scalability and ability to connect to virtually every data repository.
Though there are other search tools on the market Autonomy’s technology is so popular because the user specific enterprise helps to boost productivity. The write up asserted:
Okana’s Sense User Interface combined with Autonomy’s IDOL enterprise search provides our lawyers with an intuitive interface designed with them in mind, allowing both implicit and active conceptual searches that deliver only the most relevant information.
When it comes to the courtroom, Autonomy is a hard case to beat. Is this an extension of an existing Autonomy deal or a new one? We are not sure. Obviously Linklaters is a happy IDOL user.
April Holmes, May 10, 2011
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Recommind and LexisNexis Team to Generate More Revenue
May 9, 2011
Recommind has moved from eDiscovery to enterprise search and back again. The latest tactic in the firm’s growth strategy is a tie up with LexisNexis. This unit of Reed Elsevier has emerged as one of the leading non US owned firms delivering legal information in America and elsewhere. LexisNexis has been working overtime to cope with changing buying patterns among consumers of high end commercial online content. LexisNexis has branched into new markets, including data analytics and various legal back office services.
Recommind announced in “Recommind Forms Strategic Alliance With LexisNexis for Hosted eDiscovery Service” a new deal with LexisNexis. The idea is to apply the well known online dream of 1+1=2, maybe 3 or more. The news announcement said the tie up was “A strategic hosting and sales alliance” the two companies promises “rapid deployment of [Recommind’s] Axcelerate On-Demand” and LexisNexis’ Hosted Litigation Solutions group.
The goal we learned is to:
“provide more options and greater flexibility in discovery. . . dramatically reduce the costs and timelines associated with document review and analysis as part of litigation and regulatory investigations.”
In addition, the alliance offers “top-tier infrastructure capabilities, globally diverse IP network,” as well as security against disastrous loss events.
The business alliance will answer 2010 customer demand “for Axcelerate On-Demand with Predictive Coding.” It is designed to offer corporations and law firms to meet their review information needs, budgetary demands, and critical timelines for all of their cases, no matter how complex, changing “’the way corporations and law firms manage litigation in 2011 and into the future.’”
Sounds very good. Now we have to wait to see if there is an impact on other competitors in the over-crowded legal sector and if the river of revenues pulls a swollen Mississippi or maintains the current flow.
Jane Livingston, May 9, 2011
Freebie unlike commercial online legal and news information or special purpose search solutions
eDiscovery World Sounds Familiar
April 14, 2011
According to the Centre Daily Times, Clearwell Systems has created a new game that takes social gaming into the realm of finances, legalese, and economics.
The long and sort of it is this. Gamers are issued challenges to collect relevant documents, process, analyze, and review all collected documents in order to fulfill the real life “electronic discovery” experience that they will go through in the workplace. As each part of the work flow is finished gamers will be rewarded with experience points and build savings for their company.
“Clearwell Systems, Inc., a leader in intelligent e-discovery, today announced the release of eDiscovery World, which marks the company’s groundbreaking foray into social gaming.”
Now, not to be rude but this all sounds vaguely familiar. The RAND Corporation has already created the “game theory” and still utilizes its effectiveness by continuing to create simulated real life economic situations. How can it be groundbreaking if it’s already been done?
It’s worth wondering what Clearwell has that RAND lacks considering that they’ve entered the competition fairly late in the game.
Stephen E Arnold, April 14, 2011
eDiscovery Discovered
March 23, 2011
I read in my hard copy version the story “Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software.” (The link may go dead as the Gray Lady tries to regain its can of Monster Energy Drink.)
After reading the story, I was not exactly sure if the information was about the cost cutting that law firms must undertake to keep their partners in BMWs and vacation homes, the software that is now making its way from the green corridors of government agencies to the walnut paneled rooms of legal eagles’ nests, or the brainchild of a PR firm.
Source: http://www.challengecamps.com/programs/session.php?view=session1&subsect=morning
Let’s tackle the legal eagle issue first.
The cost of looking at email is high. Not only is email a generally crappy type of document in its native habitat, email is a downright evil invention when one is looking for who said what to whom at a specific point in time. Clever lads and lasses can make email do magic tricks, including disappear. The legal eagles want systems that prevent messing around with email. The law school grads call this spoliation. Hey, that’s why some of the lawyers command $1,200 and hour or more. With clients getting nervous about the costs of legal services, law firms are trying to manage like real businesses, which as you know are not exactly hitting home runs in the fiscal probity game.
TERIS and Clearwell Announce New eDiscovery Tool
March 18, 2011
TERIS is a fifteen year old, national eDiscovery software manufacturer who partnered with Clearwell Systems in 2010. Acquiring a gold level of certification thru Microsoft, TERIS has since worked to expand the Clearwell platform with the additions of its own series of review software.
In a repost in the SF Chronicles Web site titled “TERIS Enhances Service Offering With Latest Release of the Clearwell eDiscovery Platform“, their current endeavor is detailed. Version 6.1 gives clients the means to tenably gather information from the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS)/MO 365. We felt this passage summarizes the product’s aims:
With this new capability, TERIS’s clients can quickly identify and collect data from Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online for e-discovery requests in response to litigation, regulatory inquiries and internal investigations. Once collected, the data from the cloud is immediately available for downstream e-discovery phases such as processing, analysis, review and production. As a result, the Clearwell E-Discovery Platform frees TERIS’s clients to reap the benefits of cloud computing while still fulfilling their legal and compliance requirements related to e-discovery.
This new version also plays well with SharePoint Online, going so far as to offer auto-detection for its sites within the cloud. Reference the article for a complete listing of the support features connected to Microsoft BPOS which is, repeat three times, Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite.
Sarah Rogers, March 18, 2011
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Iron Mountain Stratify: A Hill to Climb
March 17, 2011
Has Stratify taken a hit as competing eDiscovery products have gained momentum?
Once called “The purple Yogi,” Stratify–an eDiscovery Product by Iron Mountain–was the darling of In-Q-Tel, the CIA Investment Unit. Stratify repositioned itself, and in late 2007, Iron Mountain, then a paper document storage company, snapped up the firm.
Author Chris Mellor, in “Iron Mountain’s eDiscovery Made 2010 a Rusty Mess,” reported:
- Iron Mountain bought Mimosa, a system relying on technology from such vendors as dtSearch, a modestly-sized vendor of search technology primarily for Microsoft-centric installations.
- Iron Mountain intended to integrate Mimosa’s NearPoint eDiscovery product into its Total Email Management Suite. That would have helped Iron Mountain grow, but the implementation was flawed.
- Competing eDiscovery products entered the market, and prices plummeted. Missing this trend, Iron Mountain decision-makers did not lower their prices in time, and sales took a big hit.
- Iron Mountain did see some revenue increases from other sides of its business, including other products acquired from Mimosa, but this was far offset by losses from the eDiscovery side of its business.
So what’s next for Iron Mountain?
Recognizing the error of their ways, CFO, Brian McKeon, expressed the company’s commitment to getting back on track:
We’ve corrected these issues and reduced our cost structure in line with current revenues. The impact on revenue growth from eDiscovery will continue into 2011, but our cost actions will offset these impacts, sustain margins and position us well for profit gain as we get growth back on track.
To us, this sounds like a bit of a hill to climb with a purple yogi and a content system based on a very basic search and retrieval system.
Stephen E Arnold, March 17, 2011
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Sampling Information for eDiscovery
February 25, 2011
One way to manage data is to use sampling. Clearwell Solutions has an article discussing the uses and mathematical principles behind the art of sampling: “How Do You Sample Electronically Stored Information (ESI) in E-Discovery?” The article mentions useful sources to understand sampling and how it is being used in the eDiscovery field. It first mentions the Electronic Discovery Search Group and its EDRM Search Guide, which offers a general glimpse of eDiscovery and its importance for attorneys. The Sedona Conference’s, Working Group Commentary has an article: Achieving Quality in the E-Discovery Process that will delve further sampling, applications, purposes, and court case examples when it was used. It also explains how eDiscovery teams can shift sampling responsibilities to the requesting party. That might not be a good thing.
The Sedona Conference Paper mentions that this type of sampling is called “judgmental sampling” and statistical sampling. A key point was:
“…Wherein the practitioner has a general sense of which of the several custodians and date range is most likely to offer the greatest yield. As judgmental sampling becomes more widely adopted as a way of controlling costs, electronic discovery sampling can embrace the benefits of statistical sampling as well. One area where statistical sampling has an advantage is that quantifiable measures of error and confidence intervals are possible, while judgmental sampling has no such formal measurement.”
Sampling is good way to go to process unstructured e-mail data, but what will you do when the info you need isn’t in the sample? It should be used to achieve a general understanding of data, but not all the details.
Whitney Grace, February 25, 2011
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Pro Bono eDiscovery by ZyLAB
February 21, 2011
Free moves forward at ZyLAB. The company is expanding its pro bono record as ZyLAB Launches the Industry’s First Official Pro Bono eDiscovery Services Program. For participating clients, ZyLAB will donate up to 10% of purchased services, partnering with individual firms in order to lend processing power to pro bono cases. According to the write up:
“Recent reports have indicated law firms and corporate legal departments dug deeper to increase their pro bono contributions over the last year. We are pleased to give clients the option to partner with an eDiscovery provider that has a similar mindset and dedication,” said Mary Mack, Esq., enterprise technology counsel for ZyLAB . . . “This gives law firms and legal departments additional resources for pro bono impact cases without breaking the bank.”
ZyLAB is an industry-leader in modular eDiscovery and enterprise information management solutions. While the pro bono service will no doubt be an incentive to existing customers currently involved in pro bono work, firms will continue to pay for eDiscovery services as more and more evidence and information is found in electronic format.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 21, 2011
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E Discovery Is Hot and Accelerating
February 11, 2011
LegalTech 2011 is over. Many announcements, according to several attendees with whom we spoke.
Technology continues its consumption of tasks that once occupied human existences, where time and perspiration were once the currency with which we purchased our goals. It seems the further we advance, the more we come to rely on automation, often for economical reasons. Now, even the legal system is queuing up to relinquish some of the burdens litigation bears. As a result the eDiscovery market is booming. One trend is predictive coding and its rapidly reproducing offspring.
Recommind, a California based leader in information management software, has released Axcelerate eDiscovery with Predictive Sampling, which promises its customers new advantages in the review process. Per a marketwire press release:
“Leading jurists have already written that the superiority of human, eyes-on review is a myth, so law firms continue to work with technology vendors to fill in much of this gap. Predictive Coding with Predictive Sampling enables users to comfortably leverage technology to attain a level of speed and accuracy that is not achievable with traditional linear review processes.”
Recommind’s INFOcus blog states that the predictive coding software enables “A more thorough, more accurate, more defensible and far more cost-effective document review” So what more could have been done to make this already revolutionary product even more appealing? This new version offers control of accuracy rates, as well as the ability to designate the number of pages to be examined. Keeping the divination theme running, even the cost of individual reviews is accessible before they happen.
The race is on to fill the demand for software that reduces the expenditure of both time and coin, especially in a climate where both seem to be in short supply. Why the boom? We think that in the uncertain economic climate litigation may be more interesting that innovation.
Sarah Rogers, February 11, 2011
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Protected: SharePoint Not Enough for Electronic Discovery
February 7, 2011
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