One of the dominant themes at Relativity Fest in London (my report on that is here) was the increasing use of Relativity Analytics for solving electronic disclosure problems.

While there, I interviewed Colin Shepheard, Director of Project Management at Lineal, asking him to tell me about Lineal’s use of Relativity Analytics. Lineal is a provider of eDisclosure services in London. It is a Relativity Partner, with several Relativity certifications including Relativity Analytics Partner.

Colin Shepheard said that analytics of some kind is being used in 9/10 of the cases which Lineal handles. This includes straightforward reduction of data, for example by email threading and other long-established tools, as well as more sophisticated analytical functions..

Colin Shepheard said that Lineal is increasingly being brought in at a very early stage in the process and getting involved in the scoping stage when the lawyers want to know what the data consists of and what they can do with it. The main focus is on understanding data at an early stage, allowing the lawyers to form an idea of the merits quickly. Sometimes, the result is that cases do not proceed, because the clients can quickly can see that the matter is not worth running. The use of Relativity Analytics is therefore empowering the lawyers to make decisions earlier.

Most of Lineal’s clients are law firms, but the number of corporate clients is increasing. More of them are “litigation ready”, Colin Shepheard says, and able to bypass the lawyers completely in many cases. Armed with the early assessment of the documents and issues, they are able to make business decisions about proceeding at all, not just litigation decisions once the case is underway.

Colin Shepheard says that the chief benefit of using Relativity Analytics is that they can get data into the system very quickly so that reviewers can concentrate on review. “Very quickly” will depend on the data set, but it generally takes no more than 24 hours to get the lawyers to work.

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