Overall RelFest Impressions The 25th RelFest Chicago was well attended, upbeat and polished. Relativity aiR ads greeted new (37%) and returning attendees as we deplaned in O’Hare. The Hyatt lobby and central venues were packed from morning til closing with networking opportunities. The event team dramatically expanded workshop and lab opportunities in response to last year’s demand. The partner exhibit booths seemed to have [...]
Despite 787 updated items and 385 new roadmap items there were very few with significant potential eDiscovery impact. That makes sense with recent changes on the Purview Product Management team. I would call out the general theme of the Roadmap is Copilot enablement and integration on every surface. Do you know how to scope searches for Copilot user prompts or differentiate between Copilot and [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]