Who Drives eDiscovery Innovation?
That is the debate topic for David Horrigan’s Legal Data Intelligence State of the Union session at RelFest Chicago 2026. The cast of eDiscovery luminaries and pontificators (myself) are given 4 minutes to make our case. Since I struggle with brevity, I created a variation on the Gartner Hype Cycle that I hope is worth a thousand words. I based my assertion in an analysis [...]
Copilot Prompts are Investigation Gold
Custodian intent is often central to resolving internal investigations. Custodian’s Copilot chat queries have provided some of the best evidence of intent in recent complex investigations targeting knowledge workers who are highly aware that every email, Teams chat or meeting Recap may be monitored (i.e. they have good Operational Security). Even in civil discovery custodian’s Copilot prompts can demonstrate their contemporaneous understanding that memory [...]
eDJ’s RelFest 2026 Hot Session List
I was having ILTA FOMO until I started getting briefing requests for RelFest. Case commitments squeezed my RelFest time this year. I am sharing my client recommendation list of sessions that have either great speakers or content that aligns with my focus areas. My briefings usually eat up session time, but last year I really benefited from several good sessions and labs. So come join [...]
Supporting TAR,CAL,AI Risk-Cost Decisions
Elevate’s Jeremy Pickens recent article “Why More Accurate (Gen)AI Doesn’t Always Reduce Total Document Review Costs” raised several good points using different eDiscovery review scenarios. That inspired me to adapt some of my own tools into a free review budget calculator where you can use your own collection parameters, rates and assumptions to project the potential accuracy, cost and time to completion for counsel’s risk/cost [...]
Redgrave LLP aiR vs. CAL Case Study Part 2 – Adding Costs
The Redgrave LLP case study “Generative AI for Complex Document Review” provides a unique opportunity to explore potential workflow options to project the comparative results from a cost, time, risk and effort perspective. Clients and peers are wrestling with ‘Is AI really worth it?’. That question has led me to adapting my validation and ROI models to test aiR for Review against closed client traditional [...]
Are You Becoming an eDiscovery Reverse Centaur?
Doctorow's writing is great, so give it a read. The heart of eDiscovery has always been extracting the evidentiary story from mountains of raw ESI. If AI can ‘summarize’ that mountain via a RAG-LLM model, does that make eDiscovery professionals into Cory Doctorow’s ‘Reverse Centaurs’, i.e a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine? I think my recent return to coordinating matters for [...]
Redgrave LLP aiR vs. CAL Case Study Part 1
Click for full size The Redgrave LLP team just released a fabulous case study, “Generative AI for Complex Document Review”. To summarize, they put Relativity aiR for Review up against Relativity Active Learning (RAL) using a 45k collection to test both workflows for defensibility under caselaw and the Sedona Conference TAR 1 Reference Model parameters. The paper is a dense, academic read [...]
Speaking at RelFest 2026!
Looking forward to speaking on David Horrigan’s Legal Data Intelligence State of the Union panel at RelFest 2026. Book a time slot here to brief me on your latest offerings, talk eDiscovery or pick my brain about case challenges. With my return to coordinating cases for clients and partners I am focused on leveraging AI upstream and in review to maximize value and minimize [...]
Microsoft Roadmap – Q2 2026
Microsoft is literally changing the M365 architecture in flight. Copilot functionality is being woven into every aspect of the user experience. As always, innovation seems to outpace discovery and compliance requirements, though the focus on security seems to be helping with controls, monitoring and access. Differentiating between custodial and Copilot generated ESI is a key challenge for corporate legal managing risk. Luckily, the incidents of [...]
Microsoft Moves Your Chat
Microsoft has been migrating Teams private channel data from participant mailboxes to new dedicated channel Group mailboxes since September 2025 and started deleting the ownerless or archived channels June 5th. Redgrave LLP’s Staci Kaliner wrote an excellent summary of the changes and the potential impact on holds, compliance and eDiscovery. All of this raises the risk of inadvertent loss of Teams communications for private [...]
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