LegalTech 2020 seems so far away now, doesn't it?  But it was there that we caught our first glimpses of what Relativity's new interface, called Aero, was going to look and feel like.  People asked questions, we saw a bunch of amazing new features, and the launch felt like it was still very far away.  With Covid-19 looming and overshadowing anything, it was hard to focus on something that was so far out in the future, with the immediate uncertainty of what was going on in the actual world.  Now we look up, and it's July, and good old Relativity has been cranking out the code and getting ready for this release in Q3 2020, which even non-Relativians know what that means, and it is RelativityFest.  

Are you looking at Relativity’s pay as you go model?  If you are a decision maker for your law firm or corporation, or even a vendor trying to figure out what’s next, you are definitely looking at this model to stay relevant and competitive, as well as cost effective.  The next question you should be asking is whether your company is a good fit for this model.  Some questions you might want to ask yourself:

MCS Messenger 

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. 

If you are working on a case that requires retrieving records from a government agency such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), it’s critical to follow their specific requirements or you’ll see costly delays. In our experience, we’ve learned the following 10 steps are critical:

Document review has come a long way since the days of sitting in warehouses surrounded by mountains of boxes. The advent of eDiscovery harnessed the power of technology to allow attorneys to review documents more thoroughly and efficiently via online document review platforms like Relativity. Now, Relativity has changed the game once again, using the power of AI and machine learning to truly bring document review into the digital age with the introduction of a powerful new application called Active Learning.

For better or for worse, social media has deeply embedded itself into our day-to-day lives. Beyond being merely a distraction or a way to keep in contact with friends and family, social media has evolved into a legitimate business and marketing tool for companies in nearly all industries. Given its widespread presence in both our business and personal lives, it should come as no surprise that social media has become a hot issue in litigation and eDiscovery. Most parties to today’s legal matters produce social media content that could be a source of potentially relevant information for litigation.

From the mariachi band to morning mimosas at the Innovation Awards, Relativity Fest was a sight to see and experience. My initial goals for the Fest were simple: immerse myself in the technology, gain a better perspective into how other Relativity partners were gearing up for the cloud changes and try to understand how to best position MCS for the future in a cloud-based eDiscovery world.

Part 3 of our three-part series on litigation support tools focuses on ShareFile, a secure, cloud-based content collaboration platform. ShareFile is such a robust and customizable solution that there are hundreds of ways professionals in the legal industry employ it. One of the most common uses is during the discovery phase of litigation when all information must be shared with counsel on both sides. The data may include production data, videos, recordings, photos or contracts. The sizes of these files can go to the tens of hundreds of gigabytes. ShareFile enables users to easily manage and share this data.

I was excited to go to ILTACON this year, especially given that I hadn’t been in a couple years. I planned to spend my time attending sessions, networking with other participants on new technology in the marketplace and going to some meetings with the media in attendance.