Your single source for new lessons on legal technology, e-discovery, and the people innovating behind the scenes.

Extending e-Discovery: What Could the Enterprise Platform Look Like in 2020?

Relativity

Jared Coseglia, writing for the Association of Certified e-Discovery Specialists (ACEDS), recently shared 10 Trends That Could Reshape the Legal Technology Market in 2015, suggesting the industry is ripe for innovation. Jared highlights the potential for a new focus on expert consulting work; disruptive technologies that may be on the horizon; and a more targeted, customized approach to service strategies. Emerging issues like cybersecurity and information governance are pushing this evolution at a faster clip than ever.

We noticed a common thread among many of these trends: the value behind customizing existing technology to tackle new challenges. Using familiar tools to meet new needs requires minimal investment but offers maximum appeal to forward-thinking legal teams with growing responsibilities. In the spirit of looking forward, we asked Jared—and a few other experts—what kinds of new applications might emerge for e-discovery software by 2020. Check out their predictions below.

Jared Coseglia, president at TRU Staffing Partners

Something that could revolutionize e-discovery would be an application that allows reviewers to investigate data using touch screens or remote corporal technology, abandoning traditional two-screen review and keyboards to leverage physical movement to sift through text, audio, video, and other interactive data in three dimensions. Think “Minority Report” for contract reviewers.

Rene Laurens, product specialist at kCura

I’d like to see predictive analytics of created data that closely examines the legal ramifications of how it’s being created and maintained. The app would test it against current case law and report it to the user if it violates decisions identified in some number of cases or particular court proceedings.

Geoffrey Vance, partner at McDermott Will & Emery

The current technology helps us determine what data is relevant to a dispute, but what’s the story that data suggests I should tell? To answer this question over the course of the next five years, I’m hopeful that e-discovery providers will continue to develop sophisticated technology solutions to help me wade through the information provided by my clients and their adversaries so I can better divine a simple, credible, common sense story.

Justin Smits, engineering manager at kCura

I see opportunities to integrate closely with emerging enterprise software systems, automating any steps before they become manual processes. I also picture machine learning applications that will examine and report on live enterprise data in real time—and even trigger business workflows, like red flag notifications to legal teams.

Bryon Bratcher, global senior manager of litigation technology services at Reed Smith LLP

I'd like to see more automated analytics applications that examine legacy metadata, text, work product decisions, and costs on a big scale. This would all be geared toward minimizing the amount of data to be processed, improving the speed and accuracy of data reviewed, and driving risk analysis on new cases. The keyword is automation.

Greg Houston, product specialist at kCura

I think the trend will be seamless review for end users, with applications that work like Facebook. Documents will be pushed out to reviewers and, as they work, it will feel like they are giving a ‘thumbs up’ to responsive docs and a ‘thumbs down’ to the rest—something to make it more of a game. It’d include easy security and more obvious relationships between documents and people posted to a timeline.

Early in Relativity’s history, we set out to make it a flexible platform for third-party innovation as e-discovery marches into the jungle of Big Data. Time and again, e-discovery pros in the Relativity community prove they have the creativity and inventiveness to tackle every new challenge that comes their way. Our goal is to continue providing them the right tools to take action.

What new use cases and applications do you want to see from your e-discovery platform in 2020? Let us know in the comments below.


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