The Most Important Takeaway for 2025: AI Has Become the Backbone of Modern eDiscovery

From Disruption to Dependence 

The legal industry has talked about artificial intelligence for years but in 2025, the conversation clearly has changed. AI is no longer the ‘next big thing’ in eDiscovery. It’s the infrastructure that supports high-quality review at scale and gives teams a competitive advantage.

We’ve seen this shift firsthand at MCS. Clients aren’t asking whether they should use AI anymore. They’re asking how quickly they can weave it into their workflows. The organizations that did well in 2025 stopped treating AI like a nice add-on and started treating it like part of the foundation.

The Era of Integrated Intelligence 

In previous years, AI tools were often used in isolation such as predictive coding for review, analytics for data reduction, or TAR for prioritization. Now in 2025, the focus has shifted to integration where we are seeing the entire eDiscovery EDRM lifecycle impacted.  From ingestion and processing to search, review and redaction, AI doesn’t just find documents faster; it helps uncover patterns, relationships, and risks that would otherwise remain hidden. 

This past year, we have witnessed our clients leveraging these AI tools, not just to accelerate review, but to provide strategic insight into the data itself.  We recently had a client where highly sensitive data was impacting the speed of the review.  We combined a structured workflow with built-in AI capabilities that identified the sensitive data, suggested the redactions and analyzed the large data sets with precision, reducing the overall time to complete the project by 35%. 

The Human Element: Oversight and Accountability 

Even as AI becomes more capable, the human element remains irreplaceable. 2025 is reinforcing the principle of “human in the loop” where technology performs the heavy lifting, and skilled reviewers, project managers, and attorneys guide the process with judgment and context. 

This collaboration is redefining quality control. Instead of replacing human reviewers, AI is augmenting their decision making, reducing noise, improving accuracy, and allowing legal teams to focus on high value analysis. 

With MCS project managers and review experts in the lead, AI-assisted workflows stay aligned with the highest ethical and procedural standards throughout discovery.

Ethical AI and Data Governance 

The increased reliance on AI comes with a heightened focus on responsibility and transparency. Bar associations, regulators, and clients alike are demanding clarity around how AI is used to make or support decisions in legal matters. 

In 2025, every legal organization must be prepared to explain and defend its AI processes especially when automation influences privilege calls, redactions, or production decisions. The firms and service providers that stand out will be those that can demonstrate both technical fluency and ethical accountability. 

As we move into 2026, and EDRM version 2.0 is released, our prediction is that information governance will play a pivotal role in organizations. AI systems thrive on clean, well-structured data. That means standardized intake, metadata hygiene, and secure, policy driven data management are no longer optional they are prerequisites for effective AI.   

The Takeaway: AI Is Now the Standard 

The biggest takeaway for 2025 is clear: AI isn’t a disruption anymore, it’s the standard. 

For eDiscovery professionals, that means the competitive edge no longer comes from having access to AI, but from knowing how to use it strategically. The future of document review, as we see it at MCS, lies in the right balance of technology, workflow, and technical expertise, where AI automates the routine and human expertise delivers the insight. The firms that understand this balance will set the pace for the next generation of legal discovery.