Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Greg Buckles. Published: 2011-02-08 07:47:57Format, images and links may no longer function correctly. In some ways I feel like I missed out on parts of Legal Tech NY 2011. My focus this year was to fit in as many roadmap briefings as possible. The sheer scale and audience focus of LTNY has forced providers to plan major product releases and announcements around the show. Product managers would ask me, “Didn’t you see our press release?” Even if I saw it, there were so many in the eDJ search queue that I could not remember them all. So instead of keynotes, sessions, panels or even the exhibition floor, I spent virtually all of my time hearing about the very latest products, features and where the providers think that eDisovery is going this year. With so many briefings, I am going to stick to short summaries and high points. There were quite a few providers who did not have a coherent message or any new functionality significant enough to mention. On with the fun.
DiscoverReady has moved into actual software sales with their new PrivBank™ application. The process and technology have been part of their service and iDecision offerings for years, but now they have packaged it for sale. What I really liked was the automatic updates from DiscoverReady’s central databases. This is better than any simple, static list of AmLaw domains that I have seen. On a side note, the power color of the show was neon orange. Half of the booths and banners practically attacked your eyes with that lovely glaring shade.
Orange Booth - Mango Margarita's To Match!
This orange carpet really woke you up!
kCura’s Relativity seems to be making progress on their conquest of the law firm review platform market. The big news is an unlimited license option for the Content Analyst analytics to replace the unpalatable $/GB pricing. They have really made strides for a 100 employee company. They launched their Method module last August. This adds legal hold notices, work flow and case management on top of their existing case object model. The most impressive part of kCura’s growth was all of the Relativity partners and users who are independently developing custom parts with their Relativity Dynamic Object (RDO) language. It is this kind of user driven innovation that finally gave wind to Sharepoint, WordPress and other open platforms. An example of this is the new Relay module that automates connection/importing from LAW preDisovery. This was actually a customer application that kCura will now be offering for sale.
Barry already covered FTI in his Day 1 blog, so I will just briefly mention the progress that they have made in unifying the various components on the Ringtail 8 backbone. Proven analytics plus scalability is a good message in this market. They have had 19 major matters on the new Acuity predictive coding system so far, but the per doc pricing does take a more mature client to recognize the ROI. Interested to see how the team continues to grow the suite.
Symantec’s Discovery Accelerator 9.0 (yes, my old product) has FINALLY gotten deduplication with all of their new facet navigation, autocategorization and other new analytics. This should really put a bite into all of the email deduplication point products who have been targeting the large corporate Enterprise Vault customers. It is my fault that the early versions of the product retrieved every possible copy with all the individual headers intact. But deduplication was still over the bleeding edge back in 1999-2000 and I was being incredibly conservative in design requirements back then. The Symantec team has taken the product into new territory since I went independent and I like what I see.
That is good for today, but I hope to knock out the rest through the week. LTNY continues to grow and to dominate the conference circuit. I have heard really good things about the Masters Conference and hope that we will be participating this year. I would love to hear about your experiences with Virtual LegalTech as well. Email me at Greg@eDiscoveryJournal.com with your feedback.