There is a moment in every matter involving archived communications data where the clock starts, but the data hasn’t moved yet.
The case is open, with custodians are identified, and you know the Smarsh Enterprise Archive holds exactly what your legal team needs to see, from emails to chats to files. Still, before a single document can be reviewed, someone has to export that data out of Smarsh, download it, and manually push it into Relativity aiR.
That gap between “we know it exists” and “we can review it” is where time passes way too slowly and risk creeps in. Relativity aiR’s new Collect capability for Smarsh Enterprise Archive is designed to close that gap.
Why So Much Regulated Data Already Lives in Smarsh
Smarsh built its business on a simple premise: communication data that regulators care about needs to be captured, archived, and monitored, not just stored. Its cloud-native, AI-powered platform captures digital communications across email, chat, and file-sharing channels, archives them in a compliant and defensible way, and gives compliance teams the oversight to catch regulatory, reputational, and operational risks early, before they escalate into financial loss or public exposure.
That’s why so much of the data at the center of a regulated industry matter already lives in Smarsh. Firms in regulated industries, including financial services, rely on Smarsh to hold years of archived email, chat, and file data. When a matter touches one of these industries, there is a good chance the evidence a case team needs is already sitting in a Smarsh archive. That is exactly why a direct, defensible bridge between Smarsh and Relativity aiR is so helpful for these segments in particular.
The Cost of the Manual Middle Step
Manual export-and-upload workflows are familiar territory for legal support teams; in this case, though, familiar doesn’t mean easy.
Every step a file takes outside of a controlled system is a step where something can go wrong. From being exported from the archive to saved on a local drive, to data editing and filtering and, finally, uploading into Relativity aiR, each hop leaves room for error. A file might get missed, a folder may be uploaded twice, or maybe a version gets overwritten. None of these mistakes are dramatic on their own, but each one adds friction to a defensibility story that opposing counsel, courts, or regulators may eventually ask a team to explain in detail.
There’s also the plainer cost: time. Every manual step is a step someone has to do, track, and verify, and in matters where deadlines are set by courts rather than convenience, that time is rarely available to spare.
Case teams have told us, in different words but with the same underlying frustration, that this manual bridge between Smarsh and Relativity aiR shouldn’t have to exist. The data is already there. The destination is already known. What’s missing is a direct path between the two.
A Direct Path from Archive to Processing
With this new capability, customers can collect email, chat, and file data from Smarsh Enterprise Archive directly into Relativity aiR using Collect. Case data moves straight to a Processing source location, with no export file to manage, no local download, and no manual upload step in between. Case teams get to Review faster, without waiting on a transfer process that used to take days.
Beyond convenience, that directness minimizes manual handling during the transfer process – meaning fewer opportunities for the small, human errors that can complicate a chain of custody. The path data takes from Smarsh to Relativity aiR becomes shorter, more consistent, and easier to describe and defend if it’s ever questioned.
Just as importantly, control stays exactly where it belongs. Smarsh case teams choose which existing case to pull from, so what moves into Relativity aiR is a scoped, deliberate transfer of exactly the data a matter calls for, never a wide-open pipe between two systems.
What This Means Across the Case Team
For litigation support professionals, this means less time spent managing file logistics and more time spent on the substance of the case. Data reaches review faster, with fewer manual checkpoints to coordinate and verify along the way.
For legal technology teams, this means fewer manual touchpoints in a process that previously required hands-on file handling between two separate systems. A more direct transfer path is also a more governable one.
For compliance and legal teams in financial services, insurance, and healthcare and pharma, where the archived data footprint tends to be largest, this means faster, cleaner access to the source data that matters most, without sacrificing the defensible handling that regulatory scrutiny demands.
For everyone, the bottom line is a shorter, more reliable path to review for your most sensitive archival data.
Built for the Realities of Archived Data Litigation
Communications data doesn’t sit still. It accumulates across email, chat, and file-sharing platforms, often for years, before a matter ever requires a case team to go looking for it. When that moment arrives, especially in a regulated industry where Smarsh already holds the bulk of that archived history, the last thing a team needs is a slow, manual bridge standing between the archive and the review platform.
By collecting Smarsh Enterprise Archive data directly into Relativity aiR, you get a more direct, more defensible, and simply faster path from case data to case review, with case teams still firmly in control of what moves and when.
It’s a small architectural change with an outsized effect on the parts of a matter that teams feel most: the hours before review begins, and the confidence that the data got there the right way.
Graphics for this article were created by Kael Rose.
