The Future of Ediscovery Is in the Cloud
Relativity’s announcement to no longer sell the on-premises version of their technology is more validation of what we at Everlaw have been saying for years: the future of ediscovery lives in the cloud.
Everlaw was born in the cloud, built by technologists to help solve a legal technology problem. We chose to develop our ediscovery platform cloud-natively; Everlaw has never existed as an on-premises solution. The platform was architected to take advantage of the benefits of the cloud, with our cloud-native principles being centered around speed, innovation, scale, and security. For over ten years, we have been building — not merely imagining — a technology that solves the challenges presented by both on-prem and cloud-enabled ediscovery solutions.
Everlaw is future-facing. Everlaw is not about making an online platform seem like physical document review, but unlocking capabilities that couldn’t have existed before. It gives us a peek into what lawyering could look like in the future.
-Katie Jones, Senior Associate, Sher Edling LLP
Traditional Challenges with On-Premises Solutions
One of the on-prem challenges that we have heard time and time again is that there is frustration with upgrades. Not only do upgrades take time — a lot of time — but there are also the headaches that come with version control. Multiple versions mean that teams are not always aligned, which causes more time and money to be wasted.
Unfortunately, many of these challenges are still prevalent in other cloud-based ediscovery solutions. For example, version control still exists for those on technologies with multi-step feature delivery. And there is still an exorbitant amount of scheduled downtime. Relativity advertises over 175 hours annually for RelativityOne; that’s cumulatively over four business weeks without access to the technology!
Everlaw’s Commitment to Innovation
As Everlaw continues to solve the industry’s functionality and workflow challenges, our commitment to innovation helps us deliver. In 2020, Everlaw seamlessly released over 200 new features on a four-week release schedule without interrupting our customers’ business productivity. We had a mere 4 hours of total downtime — including scheduled downtime for all releases — in the entire year!
“Everlaw can best be described as simple. That doesn’t mean the platform doesn’t do complex work; rather, it makes complex work simple. Going through hundreds of thousands, even millions, of documents can become confusing rather quickly. But the platform gives so many options to categorize, code, sort, and process with ease. It helps streamline work.”
-G2 Review, User from a law firm
Recent Enhancements to the Everlaw Platform
It’s worth noting that these features were substantial. We made it possible for our users to natively process and review mobile data from Cellebrite collections. We made improvements to Storybuilder, including the ability to manage the full deposition process (not just upload transcripts). We made improvements to our redaction tools, including metadata redactions as well as inverse and whole page redactions.
Additionally, we released quick review, which displays the rich context of the document and allows for the application of new codes, all without opening the review window. We also released Everlaw API (Application Programming Interface), which allows external technologies to communicate programmatically with Everlaw.
And finally, we delivered Clustering, an intuitive graphical display that — without any training, prior case knowledge, or use of external resources like dictionaries or ontologies — can group documents based on conceptual similarity. And these are just a small sample of the monthly improvements Everlaw customers saw over the past 12 months.
Taking Stock of Your Current Ediscovery Solution
We know that it’s easy to stay with the same ediscovery technology. Making a change can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be with the right provider. If it wasn’t on your IT roadmap before, it needs to be now because the future of ediscovery is in the cloud.
At this point, you might be asking yourself, “how do we future proof our ediscovery technology?” It’s not about finding the right platform; it’s about identifying a partner who prioritizes innovation momentum, cybersecurity, and customer success. Working with the right partner ensures that your technology needs are not just being met today but are still met in a year or two, as data volumes continue to grow, file types continue to proliferate, and needs continue to become more complex.
Innovation Is Ediscovery’s Best Asset
Today we are lucky enough to have a smartphone that singularly replaces the flip phone, digital camera, calculator, notepad, map, flashlight, walkman, and calendar we had to separately rely on in the early 2000s. The reason we have that is because of the technology companies that showed us that future-proofing our personal technology stack doesn’t have to be that scary. In fact, it’s made our lives immeasurably easier.
So when you make the decision that it’s time to future-proof your ediscovery, take a look at your entire ediscovery stack and make sure that you’re planning for the future with an innovative, secure, cloud-native solution.
To learn more about the benefits of a transition to the cloud, check out our webinar: Disruption as an Enabler for Change: Transforming Ediscovery in the Cloud. Or are you ready to future proof your ediscovery infrastructure? Click here if you’re ready to talk about your Relativity exit strategy.
