A year or so ago, we were presented with a problem. One of our corporate clients had engaged with a contract attorney company for document review. A month or so into the matter, it was determined that the contract attorneys were utilizing personal email accounts to communicate with each other about the case. That sounded pretty horrible and insecure to everyone who knew about it. Lack of a better option inspired the client to create some external mailboxes and allow them to be used by the contract attorneys.
We thought to ourselves – what if Relativity had an option within the app itself to not only send and receive messages, but collaborate in a meaningful way, similar to Microsoft Teams or Slack. Another important piece of the puzzle is what happens to that data after the case is over? You might archive the Relativity database, but what happens to those emails that have that really good case knowledge? They go over into yet another system that could have a different retention policy or if it’s cloud based, who knows how long it would be accessible for.
Based on those 2 factors, we decided to embark on a secure messaging app inside of Relativity. We wanted something that was easy for users at multiple levels, could do some basic file sharing, and have the functionality of being able to be archived along with case data at the end of the case.
More to come next week!