Jared Correia, a consultant and legal technology expert, is the host of the Non-Eventcast, the featured podcast of the Above the Law Non-Event for Tech-Perplexed Lawyers.
Legal eDiscovery Software
Data that could decide your case is everywhere — from social media posts to chat logs to discarded smartphones to decades-old emails. So it’s not surprising that eDiscovery continues to dominate the legal tech landscape. If you haven’t updated your eDiscovery tech since the aughts, you will be shocked at how the newest applications can change the game. Check out our buyer’s guide to see what you may be missing.
The LegalTech Publishing Buyer's Guides and the products and services listings below are supported by vendor sponsorships.
Legal eDiscovery Software: Reviewed Products & Services
DISCO
DISCO provides a cloud-native, artificial intelligence-powered legal solution that simplifies ediscovery, legal holds, legal document review and case management for enterprises, law firms, legal services providers and governments. Our scalable, integrated solution enables legal departments to easily collect, process and review enterprise data that is relevant or potentially relevant to legal matters.
Exterro
Exterro’s Legal GRC software is the only comprehensive platform that automates the complex interconnections of privacy, litigation, forensic investigation and more. For more information, visit exterro.com.
Indexed IO
Indexed I/O was founded in 2012 and is a comprehensive on-demand eDiscovery processing and review platform. It is the easiest eDiscovery solution on the market allowing users to sign up and start reviewing eDiscovery data within minutes. From Solo Practitioners to Big Law, Indexed I/O fits them all.
eDiscovery Buyer's Guide
Download the Free eDiscovery Buyer's Guide Now
Legal eDiscovery Software: Additional Products & Services
- ABBYY
- Avansic
- Calloquy
- Casefleet
- Consillio
- Digital WarRoom
- Discovery Genie
- Elite Discovery
- Epiq
- Everlaw
- Gimmal LLC
- Hanzo
- iConect
- Ipro Tech
- KLDiscovery
- Lexbe eDiscovery Platform
- Lighthouse Spectra
- Logikcull
- Nextpoint
- Onit
- Onna
- RelativityOne
- Reveal
- Steno
- Text IQ, Inc.
- Trustpoint
- Venio Systems
- Veritone
- ZDiscovery
- ZyLAB
ATL Non-Eventcast:
Privacy and information security are two of the general practices that attorneys and law firms need to follow. Lawyers need to protect their communications with their clients from being disclosed to others.
Gone are the days where law firms have to make copies, file, and store their data in large storage areas: with improvement in technology comes Electronic Discovery or eDiscovery.
What is eDiscovery and what can it do for a firm? These are just two of the many questions that Dan Gelb answers. Together with Jared, Dan talks about the development of eDiscovery as well as the value that it can bring.
Highlights
- What eDiscovery is for lawyers, especially for non-tech savvy ones. – 1:49
- Fun and exciting things to do in New England in the fall. – 2:54
- Developing into eDiscovery. – 4:04
- Things that Dan alluded to which changed the game of eDiscovery. – 10:01
- The value of eDiscovery software to an attorney or a law firm. – 11:33
- How can you wrap your head around eDiscovery without feeling overwhelmed? – 15:34
- Tips for moving the project forward. – 21:27
- Additional resources. – 26:32
Jared speaks with several experts in the space about how to leverage eDiscovery software in a law practice.
Highlights
- Who are the guests for today? – 1:20
- What’s the best or worst Halloween costume they’ve worn or seen someone wear? – 2:28
- With the improvements made to the different software, how easy is it to use eDiscover software? – 5:39
- How does an eDiscovery software help a firm or a lawyer in managing issues? – 9:53
- Should law firms start looking at data retention? – 15:42
- The role of proportionality with all the data floating around. – 22:46
- Why are lawyers and firms not adopting AI yet? – 29:02
Jared speaks with Christi McGowan Of Exterro Xtero, Brian McHughs Indexed I/O, and Alissa McLellan of Disco.
Highlights
- Who are the guests for today? – 1:20
- What’s the best or worst Halloween costume they’ve worn or seen someone wear? – 2:28
- With the improvements made to the different software, how easy is it to use eDiscover software? – 5:39
- How does an eDiscovery software help a firm or a lawyer in managing issues? – 9:53
- Should law firms start looking at data retention? – 15:42
- The role of proportionality with all the data floating around. – 22:46
- Why are lawyers and firms not adopting AI yet? – 29:02
Jared talks with Jeffrey Wolff of iPro about trends in eDiscovery affecting law firms and corporate legal departments.
Highlights
- Icebreaker: Jeffrey’s guilty pleasure food that he’s not telling anyone about. – 2:43
- The benefits of e-discovery software for lawyers. – 4:15
- The trends in e-discovery that law firms should be aware of. – 6:58
- Should a smaller firm utilize a different software? – 8:14
- The trends in the software product. – 10:34
- The table stakes for me: The baseline features and things that I should be looking for when buying software. – 13:57
- The additional software to make the software function better from an e-discovery standpoint. – 16:33
More law firms are using the eDiscovery software for their electronic documents and information for litigation. It’s a solution that many legal professionals find easy to use and analyze data.
But why are there still law firms that are not switching to eDiscovery software?
Jared welcomes Steve Ankenbrandt from Milyli, Brian McHughs from Indexed.io, and Alisa McLellan from DISCO. Together, they discuss the value of using eDiscovery software. Each guest also shares about their favorite eDiscovery feature. Also, Steve, Brian, and Alisa talk about the trends to watch for the software and how easy it is to implement it in a firm.
Highlights
- Who are the guests for today? – 1:06
- Thanksgiving question: In your house, is it dressing or stuffing? – 2:40
- The value of eDiscovery software. – 5:19
- How can you define defensibility for a law firm that’s yet to come across that term? – 9:19
- What’s their personal favorite eDiscovery feature? – 10:26
- Where is the software moving in the future? What are the trends people should be expecting to see? – 18:44
- Implementation for first-time users: How can you get into the software for the first time and how easy is it to implement software like this? – 23:55
- How to get more information about the guests. – 30:29
eDiscovery Software Solutions
What are the biggest benefits that eDiscovery software can offer attorneys?
Today’s attorneys are faced with the task of handling ever-increasing amounts of data related to communications, patented products, and more. eDiscovery software can be an essential tool for tracking, organizing and reviewing those huge amounts of data, allowing legal research teams to comb through, for example, a whole terabyte in record time without worrying about having missed something.
What should attorneys look for when purchasing eDiscover software?
The answer here will depend on the specific needs of your firm, but here are a few features to keep an eye out for:
- A simple process for setting up a new matter
- Fast data processing speeds and excellent processing capabilities — especially if you regularly handle a large quantity of several types of data
- A user-friendly process for creating reviews and managing permission levels
- Scalable technology that can grow along with your firm
- Robust training and technical assistance to support implementation and use
How difficult is it to implement and use eDiscovery software for the first time?
Despite the reputation for poor UX that the early generations of eDiscovery gained, today’s eDiscovery platforms have been built not just to function, but to function well in the hands of an attorney instead of a tech expert trained on a particular platform.
If you’re looking for some additional help with using eDiscovery for the first time, check out the CLE courses available on the subject — especially if you live in a state that requires some form of technology-related CLE credits anyway.
Does it make sense for smaller firms to invest in eDiscovery technology?
When it was first introduced, eDiscovery software was often just too expensive for small firms to be able to justify purchasing it. Fortunately, prices have dropped significantly since then, and new players have software designed specifically for small firms on offer.
Smaller firms are also likely to be running on a leaner staff, meaning that any tool to speed up the process of handling a case could be a welcome boost to efficiency and, ultimately, the firm’s bottom line.
The Legal Tech-to-English Dictionary
eDiscovery Software Solutions
By Jared Correia
There’s a term for when attorneys use Latin and other arcane languages to describe legal processes to consumers: “legalese.”
But there’s no similar term for when vendors use technical and other arcane languages to describe their legal software operations to lawyers.
True, this dynamic may seem unfair. But now we have The Legal Tech-to-English Dictionary to help us cope.
Read on for the latest installment, where we translate eDiscovery-related topics to plain English. And while you’re here, check out our eDiscovery room at the Non-Event to see just how effective the latest software is.
Special thanks to Shree Sharma of HaystackID for her assistance with this article.
ESI
1. Electronically Stored Information
2. If you didn’t at least know that the ‘e’ stood for some variant of ‘electronic,’ it may be time to upgrade your dial-up.
Lawyer 1: Do you have a handle on the ESI dump we just received?
Lawyer 2: No, I don’t get that with my cable package.
Cf. ESI was defined in 2006 via an update to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, to help to streamline the eDiscovery process.
Cf. This is at least a better method of proceeding than searching for paper documents in a bankers box, while trying to avoid all the flattened, dead spiders.
Metadata
1. The related information that describes the characteristics of ESI, e.g. – sender, recipient, author, date.
2. Colloquially, data about data.
Lawyer 1: Do you have the sender information for all those emails?
Lawyer 2: That’s so meta.
Lawyer 1: Fuck off, Chuck.
Cf. Aristotle’s ‘Metaphysics,’ only about data. (Give me a break, okay – I went to a liberal arts college.)
Cf. Much of the ‘Deadpool’ franchise.
Structured Data
1. Data stored in a structured format (such as a database), or delimited in form (as in a CSV file).
2. My fantasy baseball rankings for middle relievers.
Cf. Coming across unstructured data is kind of like when you step on a Lego, and just as painful. (Get it? Stray, single Legos have been removed from a larger structure.) Fortunately, there’s a shoe for that.
Deduplication
1. The process of comparing the characteristics of electronic documents to identify and/or remove exact duplicate items.
2. As opposed to reduplication, which uses repetition of sounds to create words, like: pitter-patter and flim-flam; also, of course, pee-pee.
Lawyer 1: Can we dedupe this text message with the Michael Jordan crying face meme?
Lawyer 2: Those are actually lots of different text messages.
Lawyer 1: Oooohhhh.
Cf. It turns out that reading the same exact email 64 times won’t actually teach you anything new about your case.
Pseudonymization
1. GDPR measure requiring that data be processed in a way that separates it from identifiers “in such a way that the data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject without the use of additional information.”
2. Data management de-identification procedure by which personally identifiable information fields within a data record are replaced by one or more artificial identifiers, or pseudonyms.
Lawyer 1: And your pseudonym shall be Pickles Dilhoefer.
Cf. How I went by the alias ‘DB Cooper’ in the early ’70s. . . . Oh, shit.
Jared Correia is the host of the Non-Eventcast.