Recommind Advances End-to-End eDiscovery
by Bill Ives
Recommind provides predictive information management software through search-powered business applications. I last spoke with them in 2009 (see: Recommind’s MindServer Search™ 6.0 Addresses need for More Effective eDiscovery). Recently, I spoke with Craig Carpenter, Recommind’s VP of marketing and General Counsel. I noted the unusual job combination, and Craig said when your main clients are law firms and law departments within corporations, the combination helps. We mainly focused on their Axcelerate™ Review & Analysis suite with Predictive Coding™ and how it impacts eDiscovery.
I first asked Craig to define eDiscovery. It is a term that I have seen used both narrowly and broadly. Craig said it was initially used in a more narrow sense to refer to the process of preserving, collecting, reviewing, analyzing and producing relevant documents after a legal process has begun. Now, it generally extends to include information management in anticipation of possible legal issues, as well as during them, while also addressing regulatory needs. This reflects a more proactive approach that is being adopted by many Recommind customers. This broader approach means that content collection is not an isolated activity but one that is integrated into an enterprise’s total information management system on an ongoing basis.
Cisco is using Axcelerate to take a more proactive, strategic approach to eDiscovery. One of the drivers of increased eDiscovery costs is the explosion of enterprise content, which ironically Cisco is helping facilitate with its technology that simplifies the creation and transfer of large files, such as videos. Cisco wanted to have its own enormous stores of enterprise data easily accessible ahead of any legal issues that might arise. They also wanted greater cost containment and predictability so that legal costs do not dictate when they settle and when they fight a legal challenge.
Axcelerate offers customers like Cisco a comprehensive, end-to-end platform for eDiscovery management. First, Axcelerate’s Predictive Analytics™ capability automatically categorizes documents and enables deep analysis of the data at the start of a legal process, before major costs have been incurred. This greatly reduces the amount of expensive manual labor by legal experts as they decide which documents are relevant and/or privileged in a case. It can create a taxonomy on the fly based on the content and/or work with an existing taxonomy. Here is a sample Review and Analysis scree.
You can see the flow from Predictive Analytics to Predictive Sampling below.
Second, Axcelerate’s Predictive Coding™ technology and workflow automatically analyzes, prioritizes and codes all documents in a collection. After a knowledgeable attorney reviews and codes a small number of documents, the software can automatically sort through all remaining documents on its own, in the process flagging all other pertinent documents while setting aside the rest. This dramatically expedites the document review process, slashing eDiscovery timelines and costs by 50%-90%.
Third, Axcelerate’s Predictive Sampling™ methodology provides metrics on the accuracy of the Predictive Coding process, thereby making Predictive Coding not just the fastest review but also the most accurate and defensible. The availability of a specific accuracy rate makes courts far more comfortable with the process, as it goes well beyond what is considered “reasonable” – far more so than traditional linear review. You can see a sample Predictive Sample screen shot below.
Craig said Recommind offers both on-premise and private cloud options. The private cloud option has been growing fast (over 500% in 2010) as firms see the cost savings and flexibility of cloud solutions and become more comfortable with them.
Recommind offers other search-based applications as well. We briefly spoke about Decisiv Categorization, which many companies use for information management and governance. It uses Recommind’s patented Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA) technology to look for patterns in the text within documents and automatically categorize them. I think that as the explosion of content continues there will be increasing applications for the technology that Recommind brings to the market.
