The sentiment across the legal technology community is that this year’s ILTACON was a smashing success. More than 1500 members and 1700 exhibitors attended the conference in Orlando this year. Their vibe was energetic and people were definitely in good spirits.
The need for and growth of technology continues and that’s ultimately why we were there. We spent time in the exhibit hall and demo rooms talking to companies in the legal technology space to identify what’s new and interesting. Below, again, in no particular order, is our second installment.
Knovos, which provides legal information management solutions, announces the development of Knovos Academy, an interactive certification and training program. The curriculum and instructional approach offers the latest in microlearning, just-in-time and scenario-based learning, with a focus on client-specific workflows. “Continuing the innovation and development of our solutions over 16 years, Knovos Academy provides an engaging training experience that enables clients to quickly benefit from our advanced functionalities,” said Knovos CEO Dharmesh Shingala. With customizable courses, interactive videos and instructor-led, self-directed and blended delivery methods, Knovos Academy optimizes the learning experience for legal professionals. Users can select from a full series of product and role-based training programs for each of Knovos’ solutions: eZReview, eZManage, nayaEdge, Cryptacomm, Arbicomm and Cascade. To learn more or schedule training, visit their site.
Disco announces their new AI-powered managed review offering and promises 60 percent faster review outcomes compared to other review platforms. Hot on the heels of IDC Marketscape naming the company a leader in the e-discovery market for cloud-based platforms, Disco recently used some of a recent $83 million capital infusion to invest in a new 100+ seat review center in Austin, TX to provide a managed TAR service that promises at least 88 documents per hour, per reviewer. They use continuous active learning in the Disco platform to consistently push relevant documents to reviewers, thus making the review more efficient. Chief Innovation Officer Catherine Casey told me that for every managed review project Disco has undertaken “they have estimated the cost of the review up front and delivered below budget every time.”
Disco now also features a new self-service offering called Disco for Enterprise that enables users of the platform to rapidly upload and ingest ESI into the platform. Ms. Casey boasts that Disco ingests up to 4 terabytes per day. And even better, while the files are being ingested, they are processing in parallel, which means they are quickly available for review.
Primer, a San Francisco based machine intelligence company, has been quietly building a brand for a couple years. Born out of three-letter organizations in Washington, D.C., Primer is poised to supercharge discovery and legal business development with machines that read and write. Within a few minutes of sitting down with Jon Kerry Tyerman, Primer’s VP of Business Operations, it was easy to discern the utility of the software.
Primer is expanding into the legal market with products that have been deployed and tested by the US intelligence community and a Fortune 50 global retailer. First, whereas most e-discovery products today require that machine learning models be built from scratch with each new matter, Primer uses a transfer learning approach that enables every model to be transported and used from one dataset to another, delivering instant insight into the most relevant data.
Primer’s second product debut is an automatic document summarization technology. It is difficult for lawyers to remain abreast of events that impact their clients, so Primer removes the bottleneck by organizing, analyzing, and summarizing real-time news from millions of sources, synthesizing the data, and drafting a briefing memo summarizing its findings. Primer’s proprietary Natural Language Generation technology also lends itself to a variety of other legal use cases — from summarizing documents in a DMS or litigation database to automatically generating matter narratives both during and after the close of a case.
Luminance introduces a full-fledged e-discovery workflow to their platform. Many people know Luminance as the M&A due diligence, compliance and contract management tool that uses machine learning to speed contract review and comparison. Now they offer an e-discovery solution designed to assist litigators in reviewing and coding documents in discovery. It’s refreshing, too, to have a women-run company in the legal tech space.
Other Developments
Meetings with several other companies during ILTACON yielded little nuggets of information. Many companies are well-known, while others are toiling along doing the good work of e-discovery. NexLP, led by CEO Jay Leib, continues to grow their AI-powered Story Engine software that enables users to derive actionable insight from data. I also chatted briefly with Andy Reisman, CEO of Chicago-based Elijah, the digital forensics, cybersecurity and IT company. Andy’s got a slew of awards and 20,000 hours of forensics expertise. Everlaw is another cloud-based e-discovery platform that is doing some creative things with pricing models and offers top-notch support.
Finally, word is that in the wake of last week’s Live from ILTACON article I overlooked other developments and companies. Of course, that’s a fair criticism. But the truth is we cannot possibly cover all the developments of all the companies exhibiting at ILTA. If you have an announcement about a new technology development, feel free to reach out to me.
Mike Quartararo
Mike Quartararo is the managing director of eDPM Advisory Services, a consulting firm providing e-discovery, project management and legal technology advisory and training services to the legal industry. He is also the author of the 2016 book Project Management in Electronic Discovery. Mike has many years of experience delivering e-discovery, project management, and legal technology solutions to law firms and Fortune 500 corporations across the globe and is widely considered an expert on project management, e-discovery and legal matter management. You can reach him via email at mquartararo@edpmadvisory.com. Follow him on Twitter @edpmadvisory.