eDiscovery provider UBIC has announced a strategic alliance with NextGen for the joint development of audio analytics solutions for forensic investigations and eDiscovery.

Like everything else, our telephone conversations are increasingly being recorded, and not just in the context of financial dealings and other areas where such recordings are a regulatory requirement. There has grown a curious convention that every company you speak to gives notice that it is recording your call “for training purposes”.  They lie, of course – the primary purpose for collecting the information is to have evidence of what was said. By some curious paradox, these often tend to be the sort of companies which we don’t trust much anyway – banks, mobile phone providers, insurers etc – and their recordings are potentially discoverable at our demand in litigation by or against such companies.

The forensic analysis of audio is at an early stage – whilst the recordings are no different in kind to other “documents” for discovery purposes, they raise different issues, not least of proportionality given at the time it can take to process the information.

That is the purpose behind UBIC’s development plans in this area. There is more information here.