News & Press

Public school in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood has been selected to receive a milestone-contingent grant of $250,000, awarded annually by kCura to level the technology playing field for under-resourced students. CHICAGO – June 13, 2016 – kCura, a Chicago-based legal technology company, and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) today announced the 2016 recipient of the Wired to Learn grant. The grant is a key element of kCura Gives, kCura’s community outreach program that works to ensure youth in the community have access to the technology, equipment, and training they need to be successful in today’s work environment. Created in 2013 and awarded annually, the Wired to Learn grant is a three-year, milestone-contingent grant of up to $250,000 that provides resources to help teachers integrate technology into their everyday curriculum. To be eligible for the competitive grant, schools must have more than 80 percent of their student population eligible for free or reduced lunch, and have less than a 1:1 device-to-student ratio. This year’s recipient, Funston Elementary, stood out among 57 applicants due to their community commitment and long-term plan for the technology resources that Wired to Learn can provide. During the application process, parents and teachers alike were highly engaged in envisioning a curriculum that supports both the students and broader Humboldt Park community. The school first plans to improve the personalized learning experiences available to their students, investing in personal devices like iPads and Chromebooks, and building a teacher cohort to grow their skills in integrating technology into the classroom. Since the implementation of the kCura Gives program, kCura has provided more than $1.5 million dollars through Wired to Learn and other giving initiatives to improve students’ learning experiences and prepare them for college and careers. The 2014 Wired to Learn recipient schools, Pickard and Ruggles Elementary, both moved up to the District’s highest school rating level—Level 1+—within one year of receiving the grant. “Our schools have done tremendous things with the Wired to Learn grant, which has improved access to the cutting edge technology that is vital to a well-rounded 21^st century education,” said CPS Chief Education Officer Dr. Janice K. Jackson. “We appreciate kCura’s continued support of CPS schools, and we are committed to leveraging these resources to make sure our students are prepared for a successful future.” kCura’s Wired to Learn grant was designed as an open-source framework for other companies to get involved with bringing technology to schools that need it. Other companies who are interested in implementing the process on their own terms in Chicago are invited to reach out to kCura. Through the grant, organizations can fund the purchase of new technology, donate existing technology or software, or help participate in technology mentoring activities for students and teachers. The plug-and-play design of the Wired to Learn program is meant to enable companies to give back in whatever way works best for them with the resources they have. “We believe in the power of technology, and we want the next generation to have the tools they need for whatever careers they desire in whatever community they choose,” said Dorie Blesoff, chief people officer at kCura. “What’s most exciting about Wired to Learn is that we can leverage it to build something bigger than we can do alone. We want to help every interested organization give back and ultimately have a defining impact on the community.” Those interested in learning more about kCura Gives and how to start a Wired to Learn grant program at their organization can contact kcuragives@kcura.com.

A Chicago-based tech company led by a man of Polish origin opens a development center in Malopolska. “I’m Polish and I’ve always wanted to invest in Poland,” says Andrew Sieja, founder and CEO of the U.S. tech company kCura. At the end of September last year his dream came true – his company, which is a global leader in e-discovery, opened its office in Krakow. Andrew (in fact Andrzej) Sieja is another example of Polish immigrants who succeeded in the tech industry abroad. Since an early age Andrew has been cherishing his Polish roots - he spent almost every summer with his grandparents in Poland. “In 2001, together with two colleagues from a previous workplace, we decided to open a tech company. In the beginning we provided consulting services,” says Andrew Sieja. kCura is made of two words – “k” from “knowledge” in English and “cura” in Latin, which means management and care. Business breakthrough occurred in 2004 when a litigation giant Foley & Lardner hired kCura to create a platform for managing documents. This was the beginning of Relativity, kCura’s main product. Andrew Sieja explains that the software allows organizations to manage huge sets of documents, which simplifies decision-making during the litigation process. The solution is used primarily by law firms, however, it is also used by the government (one of the clients is the U.S. Department of Justice) and litigation support service providers. Today kCura serves more than 10,000 organizations. “One of the largest cases supported by our software contained more than 700 million documents,” says Andrew Sieja. The founder of kCura started considering investing in Poland two years ago. The first task was to find a general manager who would be ready to start and develop kCura’s office in Poland. He has chosen Tomasz Gajek, who has previously worked for IT centers in Poland that belonged to companies like hybris, a SAP software company, and Sabre – another U.S. company that builds reservation systems for airlines. “First we wanted to open an office in Wroclaw, but Tomasz convinced me that Krakow would be a much better choice,” says Andrew Sieja. The Krakow office has already hired its first employees. Andrew Sieja doesn’t want to disclose yet how many people the company is going to hire in Poland. He expects that the recruitment process may take some time due to quite intense talent competition in the tech field in Krakow. Investing into Poland is important to Andrew for both professional and personal reasons. kCura is another tech company that has been tempted by great potential of Polish programmers, who are also seen as some of the best in the world. The Krakow office is meant to be a development center that will continue to revolutionize kCura’s existing product and increase the pace of innovation. kCura’s European sales office is located in London, UK. “We’re a part of a big data business, so potentially our products could expand to other industries as well,” says Andrew Sieja. This expansion to new market segments may happen in the future, however, there is still plenty of space to grow for kCura in its niche market. According to Gartner, this Chicago-based company is a global leader in the e-discovery space. The e-discovery market is worth $10 billion USD and is expected to grow by 10% yearly. kCura has money to accelerate its growth and expansion on the global market (17% of kCura’s revenue is generated outside of the US already). At the beginning of 2015 Iconiq Capital, an investment company, famous for investing in a Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and managing Mark Zuckerberg’s (founder of Facebook) fortune, has invested in kCura. They paid $125 million USD for a minority stake in the e-discovery leader.

Sam Bock, editor of the Relativity Blog, writes about the role that millennials are shaping in the e-discovery industry for an article in Legaltech News.

At London roadshow, kCura unveils Relativity 9.4, which builds off their latest releases by incorporating analytics and visualizations throughout Relativity, providing a fully integrated ECA and investigations product—and announces plans for the release of a new SaaS product RelativityOne later this year. kCura, developers of Relativity, announced the newest version of their comprehensive e-discovery software, Relativity 9.4, to more than 500 attendees at the London keynote of the Relativity Spring Roadshow. With the goal of enabling customers to address every stage of the e-discovery lifecycle in a single system—from understanding data to telling the story within it—the newest release of Relativity leverages the complete platform to take better advantage of analytics and visualizations in e-discovery. New ECA and investigations capabilities are fully integrated, so customers can use the complete suite of search, visualization, and analytics tools used in document review to research matters, gain a holistic understanding of their data before a case begins, start culling down their collection, or quickly uncover the true story behind an incident. It’s then easy to seamlessly move data to review or collaborate with Relativity providers once an assessment or investigation is complete. "With data sources becoming more and more diverse and voluminous, we continue to look for new and improved ways to analyze and present data for our clients, so they can filter out the noise and get to the facts faster," said Jon Chan, technical director at Anexsys, a London-based Relativity hosting partner using the full extent of the platform. “It makes a huge difference as a business to leverage the powerful capabilities of the Relativity 9 series—including analytics and data visualization—in one seamless platform. We’ve been able to use the flexibility of the platform to build ideal workflows and custom applications, making e-discovery a much more efficient process for our diverse customer base.” Alongside Relativity ECA and Investigation, 9.4 offers 170 new features, which have been delivered to customers incrementally in its monthly releases. The complete stack is more tightly integrated—from legal hold, collection, and processing, through to review and production—and the ability to add cluster visualizations to dashboards means users can now have all of their data analysis tools in one view for insight on the entirety of a matter, such as how concepts and themes intersect with metadata and custodian information. “Our focus is to make it easy for legal teams to search, analyze, and act on data. The role of attorneys and legal professionals is evolving, with a requirement to be skilled at data analysis—investigating and dissecting large, complex datasets to tell a story,” said Andrew Sieja, president and CEO of kCura. “With Relativity 9.4, we believe we’ve made it easier to do that throughout the entire e-discovery lifecycle.” In London, kCura also announced plans for their SaaS product, RelativityOne. RelativityOne brings a single e-discovery platform from legal hold through case construction directly to the cloud, providing additional benefits like the continuous integration of new features, hyperscale computing, high availability, the elimination of upgrade and infrastructure headaches, and a worldwide network of data centers. RelativityOne seamlessly connects with customers’ existing Relativity installations, giving them access to both the on-premises and SaaS products through a single login, with the ability to provision workspaces locally or in the cloud through a consolidated workspace list. Case teams can also easily and defensibly transfer data from local environments to the cloud, supporting the diverse needs and requirements of their clients and projects. RelativityOne will offer the same flexibility and extensibility that customers have with the current product and, when released, RelativityOne will be offered and supported in the same way Relativity is today—through a global network of experts and more than 120 Relativity partners. “Our community is packed with the brightest minds in e-discovery, and we’re planning to work closely with them to deliver a cloud solution that further elevates the types of services they provide to their customers,” said Sieja. “We’re committed to building a great e-discovery product and RelativityOne will give us the opportunity to deliver new features and enhancements even faster, getting them into the hands of end users for real-time feedback and continual improvement.” Details of Relativity 9.4 and RelativityOne will also be shared at the U.S. stops of the Relativity Spring Roadshow, taking place in New York City on May 11, Washington DC on May 12, and San Francisco on May 17. Learn more about the Relativity Spring Roadshow.