Five years or so it began to be obvious that eDiscovery tools and skills would be applied to wider purposes. There were several reasons for this.

The ability to handle ever-larger volumes of data and to present it usefully in graphical form was becoming too good to be used mainly for retrospective analysis of past documents. Vastly increased processing power in the cloud allowed activities hitherto ruled out by speed deficiencies. Privacy-related laws such as the GDPR required the identification of certain categories of data both proactively and in response to demands. Both cyber threats and compliance pressures made it necessary for organisations to bring forward the identification and analysis as close to real time as possible. The need to anticipate difficulties became more urgent and important than the historic need to trace historic activity. Taking all these things together, eDiscovery became just one of many reasons why it was necessary to be on top of the data.

There was a related prediction, that eDiscovery would become less important as other and prior functions anticipated and reduced the eDiscovery burden. If that hasn’t happened, it is partly because volumes have grown, partly because data types have increased in number and complexity, and partly because of the old reluctance to let go – “Let’s keep it just in case” remains the mantra.

Relativity has long been interested in applying its technology to things beyond eDiscovery. Though large, the discovery market is a finite one and new markets lay in wait for those willing to apply eDiscovery skills and tools to wider purposes. Firms like McCann FitzGerald in Dublin began to apply the eDiscovery knowledge to almost anything where large volumes of data were involved, and not necessarily only for disputes and investigations.

All these things come together with Relativity Trace, announced last week. It is intended for proactive compliance, that is, for identifying issues as they arise and, alerting appropriate people to them, and serving up information in a form which allowed near-instant response. Relativity’s cloud-based RelativityOne is ideally suited for this. The idea addresses all the points in my second paragraph above.

An article on the Relativity website by Jordan Domash headed Introducing Relativity Trace: Truly Proactive Compliance sets out the thinking behind Relativity Trace, describing its place in a compliance strategy, and suggesting how it might be used.

There is more than one reason for pointing you to this article. It stands in place of the formulaic press release which usually accompanies a new product, development or initiative and, unlike most of those, actually describes usefully what the development is and what it is for. I cannot sensibly add anything to it.

I interviewed Jordan Domash at Relativity Fest and that interview will appear here shortly.

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