In the world of e-discovery, the ability to efficiently organize and analyze vast amounts of unstructured data is paramount. The process of identifying, collecting, and managing legal data plays a pivotal role in ensuring just and equitable outcomes that uphold the rule of law. But as data volumes and types continue to expand, organizations need faster, more efficient ways to review and produce the required information. Relativity creates AI-driven solutions to help customers organize data, discover the truth, and act on it. Its cloud solution, RelativityOne, underpins all aspects of e-discovery, in addition to intensive tasks like investigations, contract reviews, data breach responses, and many other legally—and ethically—impactful use cases.
“Partnering with Microsoft to solve our customers’ data problems using AI was an obvious choice. Its relationship with OpenAI and its offering of GPT-4 in Azure aligns with our mutual commitment to deliver innovative technologies to solve big problems.”
Claire Oxley-Barnes, Director, Partnerships and Alliances, Relativity
The need for generative AI in the legal field
The data landscape has exploded over the past several years, leaving teams to grapple not only with growing amounts of data, but also an onslaught of new data types. There are the traditional sources, like emails and documents, and newer and more complex sources, like collaboration platforms, chat data, text messages, and video recordings. Because all this information is potentially relevant in legal matters, modern legal teams need to be ready and able to identify, collect, and analyze these huge amounts of data—often on tight deadlines.
“Law firms don’t have enough time,” says Chris Haley, Vice President, Practice Empowerment aiR at Relativity and formerly Managing Director of Technology for Troutman Pepper eMerge, a longtime Relativity customer. “They have clients who have complex legal issues and legal matters that come with complex data issues, data controls, data storage, and data types.”
The problem of too much data and too little time is certainly not new, but it is getting worse. As innovators and leaders in AI for e-discovery for over a decade, Relativity set out to build a generative AI solution to help solve this issue, and ultimately, accelerate one of its customers’ most common and painful workflows: document review.
Continuing a long-standing partnership
Relativity and Microsoft have crafted a robust partnership, focusing on enriching customers’ experiences through integrated solutions and collective wisdom. Anchored in mutual trust and a united vision for technological innovation, Relativity consistently aligns with Microsoft because it provides:
- Trust and security. Microsoft invests heavily in security measures, certifications, and regulatory compliance, providing a trusted environment for sensitive legal and personal information.
- Interoperability with Microsoft technologies. Azure allows for seamless interoperability with other Microsoft technologies, such as Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, which are commonly used in the legal and e-discovery domains.
- Global reach and availability. Relativity and its customers can use the extensive network of Azure datacenters, ensuring low latency, high availability, and compliance with data residency requirements in various regions.
- Collaboration and support. Relativity and Microsoft have a collaborative relationship that includes support, joint development efforts, and specialized services.
As the Relativity team explored generative AI solutions, it turned to Microsoft for the quality of its language models. “Partnering with Microsoft to solve our customers’ data problems using AI was an obvious choice,” says Claire Oxley-Barnes, Director of Partnerships and Alliances at Relativity. “Its relationship with OpenAI and its offering of GPT-4 in Azure aligns with our mutual commitment to deliver innovative technologies to solve big problems.”
In the end, Relativity found that GPT-4 provides a strong foundation for delivering compelling language model solutions within RelativityOne.
A new era for document review
Relativity’s goal is to provide innovative review and investigation solutions to legal teams in organizations worldwide. It developed Relativity aiR for Review on top of Azure OpenAI Service to deliver a streamlined experience directly in RelativityOne. aiR for Review uses natural language and AI-driven predictions to help attorneys accelerate their early case knowledge and first-pass review processes. “Relativity aiR for Review analyzes every document, every sentence, every word to understand its pertinence and relevance to the background of a case,” says Elise Tropiano, Director of Product Management at Relativity. “It also provides explanations and rationales for why that insight is so critical.”
With aiR for Review, customers like Troutman Pepper eMerge can run internal investigations and conduct e-discovery more efficiently. “Relativity has really been a great partner for Troutman Pepper eMerge,” says Haley. “Its products help us collect the data, process it, manage the review process, analyze the results, and make it all as efficient as possible. Troutman looks to Relativity to help it adopt and leverage newer AI technologies like language models in a responsible way to accelerate how it finds what’s important and relevant in the documents.”
Moving forward
Relativity is committed to responsible AI development: being accountable to its customers to develop AI tools that are fit for purpose, provide clarity and control, and ensure fairness, privacy, and security. This product journey is a collaboration with customers like Troutman Pepper eMerge and technology partners like Microsoft—relationships that are essential to providing world-class solutions.
“aiR for Review will be made available to customers throughout 2024, and we're also continuing to experiment with the role of generative AI in the use cases that matter the most to our users,” says Tropiano. “For example, we are exploring things like empowering our customers to build reusable models that target commonly investigated behaviors.”
Just as the e-discovery industry will continue to present an array of challenges, the partnership between Relativity and Microsoft will continue to open up a realm of possibilities. Together, Relativity and Microsoft can create a brighter future for customers.
“Law firms don’t have enough time. They have clients who have complex legal issues and legal matters that come with complex data issues, data controls, data storage, and data types.”
Chris Haley, Vice President, Practice Empowerment aiR, formerly Managing Director of Technology, Troutman Pepper eMerge, Relativity
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