In the ever-evolving landscape of legal technology, e-discovery tools have become indispensable for managing vast amounts of data during evidentiary review, analysis, and production for the purposes of litigation.
However, the potential of these tools extends far beyond traditional document review. At Relativity Fest 2024, we discussed the innovative ways in-house, law firm, and service provider teams have learned to use existing e-discovery technology to tackle new data challenges. The session, “Play-Doh Potential: Broadening e-Discovery Tools for Alternative Uses,” featured speakers from across the legal industry, including:
- Rachel Hull-Murphy, Director, Legal Operations, Relativity
- Maureen Holland, Manager, Global Assurances Services & US Privacy, AstraZeneca
- Virginia Duke Ring, Principal, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP
- Brian Karney, Managing Director, Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory
This distinguished panel shared how they’ve made the most of their team’s investments in e-discovery software, enabling their organizations and clients to approach new challenges with familiar solutions—and do more with less while confronting high-pressure, limited-budget business needs.
“As much as I love e-discovery, there are also other conversations happening behind the scenes,” Maureen said early in the Fest session. In particular, teams like hers are exploring how they can get more out of their investments in these platforms, practice good data hygiene by integrating their whole tech stack, and tackle their many data challenges with intentionality and efficiency.
“If you are talking about these [data challenges] before discovery, you are ahead. I have relationships in different areas [of our business] now and the questions I’m asking are: How do we get closer to the left-hand side of the EDRM? How do I reduce my footprint? My new catchphrase is that ‘I have to stop solving for one and solve for many.’”
Read on for three of the non-traditional uses of e-discovery technology shared by our panelists to get more out of existing tools.
Tracking Critical Information
Most everyone has used a spreadsheet at some point or another to keep track of one kind of information or project plan; however, when you have thousands of lines of data with documents connected to each one, a DIY tracker in Excel can quickly become unmanageable.
Our panelists shared two examples of how they leveraged Relativity to make keeping track of, analyzing, and reporting on this type of data easier, while taking advantage of the security and privacy protections already in place within the e-discovery technology.
In one example, the panelist’s firm managed a client’s customer disputes by using saved searches to tag the disputes, uploading documents with a group identifier to link them as families, and provide reporting in real time to their client. In another example, the panelist’s team is using Relativity for a project with thousands of medical records and leveraging active learning to mine the data for a class action.
Contract Review and Management
Contract review and management is another area where your existing e-discovery tools can make a significant impact. For example, when reviewing and comparing employment contracts, one of the panelists used Relativity Contracts to reduce the number of contracts from 40 to 15 in real-time while on a screenshare with their client—streamlining a tedious process and opening up new avenues for business opportunities.
Another panelist shared that, when you’re working on a project and find you don’t know what types of contracts you are looking at, you can combine your e-discovery tools with generative AI to pull out hundreds of fields from contracts to easily compare and identify the relevant information.
Enhancing Global Assurance
Less a use case and more an organizational strategy, one of our panelists shared how they are using the practices and tools from e-discovery to enhance global assurance. By targeting non-legal use cases with sensitive organizational data holistically, the company is streamlining processes, keeping critical data in-house, and reducing the time and cost from sending this work to external providers.
This approach of applying traditional e-discovery tools and processes to overall legal data management has gained traction in the legal industry lately with the Legal Data Intelligence initiative. It’s an excellent way to break down siloes, connect disparate teams with mutually beneficial knowledge, and ensure a holistic understanding of your data footprint.
This type of forward-thinking exercise can ensure you’re extracting the most insight possible from your organization’s many data stores, ensuring that this information is treated as the asset it is—not a liability.
Get Proactive to Turn Data Challenges into Opportunities
By thinking creatively and leveraging the full potential of tools already at your fingertips, legal professionals can address a wide range of challenges beyond traditional document review.
As Virginia aptly put it during our Relativity Fest session: "If you are doing something in a way you think is clunky or you have seven people trying to share a spreadsheet, try something new.”
The future of e-discovery technology lies in its ability to adapt and innovate, providing legal professionals with powerful solutions to meet their evolving needs.
Graphics for this article were created by Sarah Vachlon.
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