Relativity aiR Assist: When the Question Comes Before the Search

You usually know what you want to find out.

Who knew about the issue first? What was being said internally before a decision was made? When did concerns start showing up in the communications? Which people were involved in the conversations leading up to an event?

Finding the documents that answer those questions is another story.

For years, the starting point has been some combination of search terms, custodians, date ranges, filters, and other criteria that help narrow a large document population. Those tools are still very much part of discovery, but they require someone to translate the question they have in their head into a search the platform can run.

Relativity Assist gives counsel another place to start. Users can ask a question about an indexed document set in ordinary language, and Assist searches the available text for information related to that question. Its response includes citations back to the documents it relied on.

For MCS clients using Relativity, our role is to help put the technical pieces around that process in place. That can include preparing the document population available to Assist, configuring the Relativity workflow, helping counsel translate the issue they want to explore into the tool, and supporting the searches or review steps that follow. Counsel remains responsible for interpreting the evidence and deciding how it affects the matter.

You May Know the Question Before You Know the Search

Consider a matter involving a product launch that did not go as planned. Counsel wants to understand whether concerns were raised internally before the launch.

A traditional search might begin with the names of the people involved, a date range, and terminology associated with the product or problem. But early in a matter, some of that information may not be known yet.

The question itself may be much easier to articulate:

What evidence is there that the team knew about the problem before the product launch?

Assist looks across the documents available to it for material related to the question and provides citations to the sources behind the response. Counsel can then review those documents in context and decide what, if anything, warrants further attention.

A cited email might introduce a person who had not been part of the initial review. A communication may use an internal project name no one knew to search for. A particular date may turn out to matter more than expected.

Those details can then inform the next search, review population, or question.

The value here is not that Assist replaces search. It gives counsel another way into the documents when the search terms are not obvious at the outset.

The Answer Depends on the Documents Available

A natural-language question can feel simple, but Assist is still working from a defined set of documents.

If the relevant time period, custodian, or source is not represented in that population, the response cannot account for material that is not there. If counsel asks about a decision made in June but the available documents only run through April, Assist cannot account for what happened in May or June.

MCS can help configure the document populations and Relativity workflow so Assist is working with the materials counsel has identified for the inquiry. We can also help address technical considerations such as searchable text, document availability, permissions, and the way the data is organized in the workspace.

Those decisions do not determine what the evidence means. They determine what information the tool has available to search.

A Question and a Search Do Different Jobs

Assist is useful for asking what a group of documents says about a subject. That is different from asking Relativity to return every document that meets a defined set of criteria.

If counsel wants to understand what communications exist around an event, Assist can provide a starting point and cite documents connected to its response.

If the assignment is to identify every document containing a specific term during a particular period, standard search tools are designed for that job. Relativity recommends traditional search when exhaustive retrieval is required.

In practice, the two can work alongside one another.

A question in Assist may introduce a name, phrase, project, or date that later becomes useful search criteria. A traditional search may turn up a communication that raises another question counsel wants to explore.

MCS can help set up and run those workflows in Relativity based on the direction counsel provides, whether that means working with Assist, building a traditional search, adjusting the document population, or moving between different tools as the review progresses.

The Documents Still Come First

One of the most useful parts of an Assist response is the connection back to the source material. Take the product-launch example. If Assist points to an email sent two weeks before launch, the generated response is only part of the picture. Counsel can open the email, read the full thread, review any attachments, and consider the communication alongside the rest of the matter.

The document may support the response exactly as presented. Additional context may affect how counsel reads it. Either way, the underlying source remains available for review.

MCS can help with the technical side of following those threads through the data. If a cited document introduces another custodian, project name, date range, or set of communications counsel wants to examine, our team can help build the appropriate search or Relativity workflow around that direction.

The assessment of what those documents mean stays with counsel.

Helping Legal Teams Put Assist to Work in Relativity

Clients do not always come to MCS with a finished search strategy. Sometimes they come with a question.

They may want to understand who was involved in a decision, what was being discussed during a particular period, or where to begin with a document population they do not yet know well.

MCS helps put the Relativity pieces in place around those questions. Our team can prepare the document population available to Assist, configure the workflow, and build or adjust searches based on counsel’s direction as the review develops.

Assist gives counsel another way to approach the documents. MCS helps make sure the Relativity environment and the data within it are set up for the inquiry counsel wants to pursue.

The search terms may come later. The question doesn’t have to.