It has been a while since I caught up with my friend Joe Bartolo. Knovos has evolved from their service provider roots (Capital Novus) into a broad, diverse legal technology company. Despite Relativity’s dominance of the large matter review market, mid-market players like Knovos seem to be gaining traction with usable, focused products that meet specific customer requirements. eDiscovery functionality, performance and innovation can [...]
The majority of corporate professional knowledge workers shifted to remote or hybrid working in 2020. Working from home has challenged many HR, legal and compliance departments to adapt their policies and acceptable use guidelines. Video online meetings and continuous chat channels are essential tools to keep internal/external teams virtually connected. Prior to the pandemic, most of my clients viewed meeting recordings and multi-party chat [...]
2020 was a write off for many in the eDiscovery market. Client initiatives held or cancelled outright while the judiciary granted mass continuances as they struggled with the transition to remote hearings. Many of my long-term clients issued work stoppages that lasted more than six months. 2021 arrived carrying all those backlogged matters and projects. After a few quarters scrambling to catch up and [...]
Fluid Office files are Microsoft’s next generation of dynamic collaboration documents for Teams Chat and other communication channels. Multiple users will be able to simultaneously edit tables, agendas and task lists within M365 online mailbox, SharePoint sites and Teams chats. “Google Docs on steroids” indeed. Thankfully, the default OneDrive and SharePoint storage locations mean that existing preservation functionality covers new .Fluid files created by [...]
When my old friend Michael Lappin took a role at Ligl (formerly Vertical Discovery) I knew that I needed to see what had lured him there. Ligl is providing what they call an ‘orchestration hub’ for corporate and firm eDiscovery teams. Despite MSFT’s efforts and the ongoing eDiscovery market consolidation, most of these teams are still cobbling together ‘Frankentech’ to track and manage their [...]
Lost in all the hype around market consolidation and IPOs is the sad truth that the vast majority of legal technology is destined to end up in the digital dust bin. Thompson Reuters announced the retirement of eDiscovery Point by June 2022. Launched in 2016 and fueled by the CaseLogistix IP/talent TR acquired in 2010, eDiscovery Point never seemed to gain market traction against [...]
I am generally bullish on what I consider to be the undersized eDiscovery market. The $44 stock price spike after the CS Disco’s IPO equates to a $2.5B market capitalization. That is a 36X MULTIPLE of CS Disco’ s reported $68.4M 2020 revenue. Red flags pop up for me considering that CS Disco lost $29.8M in 2020 and $22.8M in 2019. According to the [...]
A.I. driven review platforms seem to be a hot trend. First Reveal Data, followed by Relativity’s acquisition of Text IQ and now Exterro releasing a new review offering based on ‘deep learning’. I always want to understand the tech and mythologies underlying solutions. Ajith Samuel and Bill Piwonka at Exterro were kind enough to walk me through Exterro’s investments in A.I. going back to [...]
Despite the recent drop in share prices ($11.86 down to $2.47), public ASIC investigations, executive departures and now AFP raids, I still believe that last November’s bully Nuix IPO was a signal of the world market’s appetite in legal technology. It would be a shame if the two largest eDiscovery transactions to date both proved to have cooked their books. For those of you [...]
eDiscovery Related Markets My thanks to the peers who took the time to question my belief that the eDiscovery market has always been undervalued or mis-defined in annual market sizing reports. I do not doubt the effort and diligence of analysts, marketing teams and consultants who have aggregated public and best available private revenue numbers from eDiscovery tech and service companies. Instead, [...]