This is the time of year when we are all asked to say what were the important developments of 2016 and to look forward to 2017. In a year which has brought further judicial approval of predictive coding, the beginnings of mainstream acceptance of artificial intelligence, and significant developments in privacy and data protection, the trend at the top of my list is greater oversight of eDiscovery by corporations.
Xerox Legal Business Services (to be part of Conduent from 3 January) ) is particularly well placed to offer the kind of overview which corporations need. XLS has offices throughout the US, Europe and Asia. With offices throughout the US, in Europe and in Asia, it has long been a significant provider of hosted eDiscovery services using its own technology, and now offers Relativity as a managed service alongside its own Viewpoint All-in-One eDiscovery Platform.
Its data management solution, a new proprietary technology called The Client Hub, gives clients an integrated view of all its eDiscovery cases hosted by Xerox whichever platform they are on. The Client Hub aggregates data throughout the platforms, giving real-time, interactive reports through dashboard visualisations. The point is not just to keep track of the status quo but to inform predictions about timelines, costs and the allocation of human and other resources.
Beth Fritts, Managing Director of XLS, said “equipping our clients with multiplatform choices in a birds eye view of their work across all cases gives them the insight and flexibility they need to effectively control their projects”.
Alongside its technology developments, Xerox Legal Business Services keeps up a stream of useful posts on its blog, Xerox eDiscovery Talk. The two most recent ones, How to protect your company from your own employees and Is Office 365 alone sufficient to address your eDiscovery obligations?, address subjects which corporate legal departments need to keep in mind. There is also a set of Legal Business Services Insights which cover subjects such as international discovery and the use of analytics.
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