“How can I use AI?” and other challenges overheard at Legalweek 2022

The Legalweek 2022 event earlier this month was an exhilarating in-person experience, highlighted by sharing ideas face-to-face with leading attorneys, legal technologists and industry experts….

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Wendy Cole

March 24, 20227 minutes read

The Legalweek 2022 event earlier this month was an exhilarating in-person experience, highlighted by sharing ideas face-to-face with leading attorneys, legal technologists and industry experts. In those conversations, I heard the following topics continually expressed as concerns for legal teams.

No. 5   “Document review for investigations is cost prohibitive and slow. There’s got to be a better way.” 

There is a better way to conduct internal and regulatory investigations than traditional outbound review for production workflow. That’s why OpenText™ launched its Recon Investigations service.  With this service, the OpenText™ Recon team expertly manages all elements of an investigation, quickly delivering the facts that enable rapid, data-driven case strategy and decisions.  Using a combination of advanced technology and time-tested unstructured data interrogation techniques, the Recon team can uncover key documents in weeks, rather than months. 

For organizations wanting to conduct their own investigations, OpenText™ Axcelerate™ Investigation is a powerful investigation and early case assessment platform that offers robust analytics to help teams find the facts in a fraction of the time of traditional eDiscovery systems and review methods.

“From our first contact with OpenText, it was absolutely clear that was the way to go. We had the confidence that OpenText offered the solutions and the expertise to handle this on our behalf.” They added, “It simply wasn’t possible to review and investigate everything on our own, not while the daily work also has to be done. With OpenText Recon Investigations service, we had specialists working for us, with no time delays, and a solution that would give us full transparency.”

-Legal team member, global automotive manufacturer

The proper application of advanced analytics uncovers critical facts at the earliest stages of an investigation and drives better case strategy and decisions.  And where a full-blown review for production is required, data can be seamlessly reviewed in either OpenText™ Axcelerate or OpenText™ Insight. With these platforms, review teams can take advantage of advanced technology-assisted review (TAR) and leverage key insights and documents gleaned during investigations to increase speed to production.

No.  4 – “Collecting data from new ESI sources and from remote and/or off-network locations is one of our biggest pain points.”

Many conference attendees said it’s challenging to ensure all the data floating around their organizations is accurately identified, preserved and collected– across multiple communication platforms, and with a largely remote workforce—to meet their legal needs, whether driven by litigation, investigation or regulatory compliance.  They expressed particular concern about collecting chat data. This isn’t surprising, given the dominance of unstructured data (90% or more)[i], and the fact that in 2021 more than 600 billion business chat messages were sent.[ii]   

When it comes to collection of ESI, OpenText™ Axcelerate™ offers flexible solutions for do-it- yourself collection with more than 45 data source connectors, including chat parsers, to facilitate rapid collection, processing and review of data of all kinds. Where the situation calls for additional resources or expertise, including forensic collection and assessment of data, OpenText experts can apply industry-leading technologies and processes to balance the risk and costs of data collection and digital forensic services

No. 3 –  “We are looking for a change from our current eDiscovery platform.” 

As much as conference attendees were relieved to see things returning to some semblance of normality following the pandemic, there was a very clear sentiment that not everything will return to the way it was. Given increased demands and tighter budgets and time constraints, attendees said they can’t afford to maintain the status quo when it comes to eDiscovery technology.  Legal teams (both internal and external) are looking to technology to ease the burden of manual work. In order to effectively do so, eDiscovery technology must:

  1. Be easy to implement and friendly to use. Busy legal teams don’t  have time or patience for steep learning curves that may interfere with productivity and meeting tight timelines. The best eDiscovery platforms are sophisticated but not complex or confusing. An intuitive, user-focused interface allows teams to realize immediate efficiency.
  2. Be both cost-effective and flexible. The best eDiscovery solutions minimize new capital and operational expenditures by offering secure cloud deployment where desired, while also providing on-premises or hybrid models when data must stay behind an organization’s own firewalls.
  3. Allow teams to try out the technology before they commit. With so many options on the market and promises of better, more efficient technology, savvy legal teams want to put technology to the test with OnDemand (one-off transactions) in the real world before making financial and resource commitments to a new platform. 

Axcelerate and Insight technology platforms allow teams to access state-of-the-art eDiscovery platforms as needed, on demand, without requiring substantial initial time and cost investment. With minimal ramp-up time users can maximize efficiency with intuitive smart filters, predictive search, sentiment analysis, automated document summaries, RegEx pattern recognition, advanced and transparent TAR, and more. 

For organizations looking for full control, OpenText also offers cloud-based single tenant (private cloud) and on-premises eDiscovery solutions.

“OpenText Axcelerate changes the way that we investigate. It has become a much more intuitive and iterative process.”

Richard Day, Head of eDiscovery, Serious Fraud Office

No. 2 – “We want an end-to-end solution that takes us from collection through to analysis, review and production – not point solutions that require us to port data from system to system.”

There is growing frustration with having to purchase and piece together one solution to collect data, another to process, another to conduct ECA with advanced visual analytics and then yet another to complete the review and production. Unlike vendors offering single or multiple point solutions, Axcelerate is an integrated eDiscovery solution allowing legal professionals to collect, process, analyze data, conduct accurate, early-case assessment and review and produce electronically stored information in a single platform.  With Axcelerate, teams can apply multiple lenses, vantage points and feature/functionality — all from a single data storage point.  And legal teams get all the functionality, including rich visual display for optimal insights, required for ECA, investigations, review and production in one intuitive interface- no add-ons or extra charges—which means no surprises or risk. 

No. 1 – “AI, AI, AI. That’s all I hear but tell me how it applies to my eDiscovery challenges in concrete terms.”

When it comes to eDiscovery, the primary application of AI is through machine learning related to TAR.  OpenText machine learning (aka, AI) is part of  both our Insight and Axcelerate platforms and features continuous-learning algorithms to maximize speed and efficiency and minimize the number of documents requiring eyes-on review. As reviews progress and more coding decisions are entered, the models continuously learn what is important to the matter and become smarter. As a result, OpenText TAR allows legal teams, including our expert Managed Document Review team, to get to relevant documents and complete review in just a fraction of the time that it would take with linear review or less sophisticated TAR protocols. 

Honorable mention:   Ohhh…..so that’s what an unmasked human face looks like…..I had forgotten what it was like to talk to other human beings and be able to read facial expressions and body language.”

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth and chatted with us.  It was great to literally see your faces!  We look forward to helping you turn your greatest eDiscovery challenges into even greater victories.

To learn about maximizing eDiscovery efficiency, download our new white paper “The efficiency imperative: How corporate legal departments and law firms are bolstering their eDiscovery postures.”

Learn more about OpenText Legal Tech solutions.

 


[i]  https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/07/rewiring-tackle-unstructured-data/

[ii] https://dispatch.m.io/enterprise-messaging-wars-slack-microsoft-teams/#:~:text=41%25%20Microsoft%20Teams,1%25%20Workplace%20from%20Meta

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Wendy Cole

Wendy is a long-time legal technology and eDiscovery enthusiast. Having participated in many facets of the legal and legal technology industries, her broad range of experience spans from being on the front-line of eDiscovery projects as a civil litigator and eDiscovery counsel, to managing and marketing legal technology software and services for global organizations.

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