Webinar Recap: Enhancing eDiscovery Processing and Early Case Assessments with Cloud Technology

In-Depth Look into Web Data Processing

Ryan Nichols kicked off the webinar with an overview of the latest product updates to Reveal’s web data processing platform. He also touched on how these advancements are addressing common problems often seen in the eDiscovery landscape. One of the features introduced was a local application uploader, developed for seamlessly uploading substantial volumes of data—an invaluable addition.

Preview Before Review—Seamless Transition to Review

Beyond this, he emphasized the importance of previewing data before promoting it for review in the Early Case Assessment (ECA) workflow. ECA in eDiscovery refers to the process of quickly analyzing electronically stored information (ESI) to assess the scope, risks, and potential costs of a legal case. ECA is a critical step in eDiscovery that helps legal teams make smart, strategic decisions while optimizing time and costs.  

In the new updates, it's now possible to process data and promote it to review or process solely, further implicating the focus on flexibility and adaptability. The system also now enables users to upload files and folders and associate a custodian location source on an individual file level. These features are designed with efficiency in mind.

Error Handling & New Features in Reveal's Platform

David Shedd, VP of Sales Engineering at Reveal, presented the second half of the webinar. He dove into error handling and the future features expected in Reveal's platform, emphasizing the importance of the ECA. He highlighted the ECA’s crucial role in preliminary data analysis for potential risk representation and overall scope specification in the eDiscovery process.

eDiscovery Simplification

Shedd went further, introducing the key components of Reveal’s platform that emphasize speed, consistency, transparency, and self-service. The advanced system facilitates sub-second searching, employs the Reveal query language for flexibility and precision, possesses exception identification and remediation tools, and caters to a self-service model for clients.

Highlighting the ECA Component

The upcoming ECA features include user feedback, saved searches, work folders, and text and metadata searches. It can also oversee data promotion for review. Notably, the system deduplicates data when promoting it for review, thus further enhancing the efficiency of the process.

ECA Module in the Discovery Manager Processing Engine

A further enhancement was the integration of the ECA module in the existing discovery manager processing engine. This adjustment will allow users to easily access and manage their data before promoting it for review. This module also allows for sophisticated searches and data filtering, offering enhanced flexibility in deduplication options when promoting data to review.

Q&A

QUESTION: Will clients have the option to switch off deduplication from the ECA when they promote to review?

ANSWER: Yes. We are not currently planning on having multiple dedupe scopes per project, but we do intend to allow users to promote data for review without deduplication.

QUESTION: Why will the analytics functionalities for data culling not be available in ECA?

ANSWER: The short version is that our biggest costs are computational, and if people get the benefits of analytics without promoting data to review, it is not well accounted for in our model. There is also an argument to be made that ECA should be available ASAP, and adding analytics to the workflow upstream would disrupt that process. I’d suggest limited analytics upstream, but that’s a decision that will be made after my departure.

QUESTION: How will this work in terms of billing? Does it still differentiate processing and hosting, and do they still have x5 storage in processing? It’s just that processing is now in the front end.

ANSWER: The billing model does not change with the new ECA module. Data is not considered hosted until it is promoted to review. Moving data into ECA is the rough equivalent of searching data with selective sets today.

Conclusion

In closing, each webinar delivered by Reveal concluded by stressing the simplification of eDiscovery workflows through web-based processing, creating a clear path to the future of the discovery process. The significant reduction in technical complications aids in a user’s ability to handle and navigate their data swiftly and efficiently. For any remaining inquiries and additional information, a comprehensive blog is written to address them, further proving Reveal’s ongoing commitment to its clients.