There are many challenges facing litigation support professionals and members of the case team today. Among the challenges are user training and support, management and tracking of data from many sources, management of cases and third parties that require access to documents, and ensuring enough internal IT resources to meet the exponential storage and performance needs of all the firm’s matters. Relativity, originally developed for a law firm in conjunction with its case teams, was built to address these concerns.
End-users possess a variety of skill levels and comfort with review platforms. Relativity’s granular security model allows each feature to be turned on or off on an ad hoc basis, giving administrators full control to customize the interface to the needs of the end-user based on the individual’s skill level. This then gives the user access only to the documents and features needed. Secured features disappear from the screen entirely, creating an easy-to-use and streamlined interface. Any superfluous options in the software are removed, which allows a reviewer to be more comfortable and productive after only a limited amount of training.
As the user’s comfort level and aptitude increase, additional features can be enabled instantly to give the user more control. When Relativity has been customized for a particular user, those settings can be saved in a template for future case creation. In addition, Relativity offers the ability to link to help documentation, access internal web portals, create a case-specific knowledgebase, and even the ability to access any open or historical support tickets with kCura’s client services team.
Relativity provides a welcome set of tools for litigation support professionals charged with managing data flowing into and out of discovery databases. The Relativity Desktop Client has built-in validation logic that allows users to locate errors in a load file prior to the data being loaded. Additionally, error lines are written out to a separate file, allowing staff to load all valid data and deal with errors separately without having to delay the entire load process. Beyond validating the data, images are checked for compatibility with the system on load to avoid errors at production time.
Relativity’s field mapping feature requires an administrator to map fields from the database to corresponding fields in a load file only once, and then permits saving the settings for the expedience of all future loads. The Relativity Desktop Client can be enabled to run over the web with an encrypted connection, opening up the possibility of more seamless collaboration with preferred vendors, permitting them to validate load files before sending them to the firm, or to load data directly into the firm’s databases. Relativity Dynamic Objects allows users to track chain of custody and all details surrounding the intake and processing of media . This includes visibility to who collected the information and when, and who processed the data, including specs, vendor contact information, pricing schedules and invoices. Dynamic Objects ultimately links every document in Relativity to its source media. In addition, PDF intake letters can be posted as supporting detail.
As the industry’s most flexible review platform, Relativity provides the tools necessary to manage and report on the document review process:
- Design a best practices workflow for review and automate that workflow inside Relativity.
- Save efficient workflows as case templates for fast deployment in new matters.
- Batch and distribute documents according to custom requirements, and force the flow of documents from one group of reviewers to the next based on subjective reviewer decisions.
- Avoid coding collisions, and enforce process and decision-making accuracy by placing custom rules and conditional logic on coding forms.
Examples of this control include not allowing a reviewer to designate a document as both privileged and responsive, or having certain issue tags require that attorney comments be added or other designations addressed. Relativity Dynamic Objects provides options for maintaining a case-specific knowledgebase and storing other non-ESI documents related to the case, such as pleadings, correspondence, etc. Relativity offers a variety of options for reporting on the review and organizing documents post-production. Each produced copy of a record is linked to the original for quick easy reference and historical context. Ad hoc reports based on search criteria and filtering can be exported to MS Excel with a click. A summary reporting tool allows for the creation of custom reports, and reviewer statistics supply information on how many decisions per hour each reviewer is achieving.
As a centralized web-based system, Relativity allows collaboration with other offices, contract reviewers, clients, experts and vendors seamlessly and without the need to deploy software. Upon creation of a username and password, experts and clients gain instant, secured access to documents they need to see. A highly granular security model allows the securing of all necessary metadata and attorney work product, including redactions and annotations on documents, coding information and designations. Alleviate the need to ship CDs and paper and manage multiple, disparate copies of the same database. Enable preferred vendors to load data directly into the firm’s Relativity cases and avoid the data loading process altogether.
Relativity’s enterprise license model allows a firm to effectively scale the system without worrying about additional licensing costs. Continue to add storage and processing capacity as needed without server or processor-based licensing fees. Because Relativity runs on a standard Microsoft infrastructure, it can be integrated into the firm’s existing infrastructure using the same hardware, software and personnel already in place to manage other enterprise systems.