3 Recent Legal Tech Partnerships and What They Mean for the Industry

Ricci Dipshan, Legaltech News

What an e-discovery service provider, consulting firm, and legal tech SaaS provider’s recent partnerships say about the focus and beliefs of the modern day legal tech industry.

The legal technology world is one of evolving challenges—as technology empowers attorneys to handle cases more effectively, it also makes those cases much more complex and difficult to manage. 

To meet changing demands and the current technology landscape, many legal tech firms find it necessary to leverage their expertise through partnerships with their compatriots. Here’s a look at three most recent partnerships, and what they say about the state of the industry:

Discovia and Brainspace: It’s a TAR and Analytics World

For those providing e-discovery services to law firms and legal departments, staying ahead of industry advances and trends is not only wise planning, it’s a part of survival. And for many, this means partnering with some of the most innovative legal tech providers on the market today.

E-discovery service provider Discovia, for example, recently partnered with Brainspace Corporation to incorporate Brainspace’s Discovery 5 analytics platform into their client offering. The technology will enable Discovia’s clients with an array of e-discovery capabilities, including predictive coding (TAR), communications analysis, email threading, and conceptual search.

Christian Lawrence, Discovia’s CEO, previously told Legaltech news that the company not only licenses out Brainspace’s technology, but also “collaborates with the Brainspace team to develop client relationships and share feedback on the product for future development.”

The partnership is an example of the growing need for legal e-discovery practitioners to leverage visual analytics as their projects and cases involve increasing volumes of data, including an array of disparate information, such as unstructured data.

“It’s a needle in the haystack problem–and the haystack just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It is the growth of unstructured data, which increases the value on smart processes for early case search, analysis and prioritization,” Lawrence said.

Stroz Friedberg and Zapproved: An EDRM for All 

While many legal technology professionals need to constantly stay ahead of the tech curve, they also have to address the challenge of providing an integrated and comprehensive toolset for their clients.

To meet this head on, consulting firm Stroz Friedberg partnered with Zapproved to integrate Zapproved’s Legal Hold Pro technology into its E-discovery Discovery and Disclosure platform.

Stephen Whetstone, managing director and leader of Stroz Friedberg's Data Discovery practice, previously told Legaltech News that the move was in response to client demands for a platform that can operate across the entire EDRM cycle.

While legal hold technology can manage and track holds across an office or project, he explained the next step is to figure out “how do you collect that information, how do you know that you collected everything that has been preserved? And then from collection, how do you know once you begin to load it up in the e-discovery tools and processes? How do you create audit process, all the way back to original preservation?"

The demand for comprehensive EDRM solutions was highlighted in ZL Technologies’ and the International Legal Technology Association’s (ILTA) 2016 Information Governance Survey, which found that when given the choice between a multi-step solution, or a best-in-breed solution that focused on one EDRM step, or 70 percent of legal tech practitioners chose the former.

  

AdvoLogix and Carahsoft: Secure in the Cloud

Deploying legal technology to a diverse and ever-expanding client base can be an IT nightmare, but with the advent of SaaS, legal technology providers have an opportunity to provide their solutions on a scale once thought impossible.

Cloud-based law practice and legal matter management solution provider AdvoLogix, for example, partnered with Carahsoft Technology, a government IT solutions provider, to deploy its solutions to local, city, state and federal government agencies via the Salesforce App Cloud.

AdvoLogix CEO and co-founder Jonathan Reed told Legatech News that the partnership is an expansion of the company’s government client business, as AdvoLogix already provides their technology to an array of public sector clients, from state teacher retirement systems to governmental environmental monitoring agencies.

The move also represents a growing consensus in the legal tech industry and beyond about the safety of cloud services. Reed noted that "the question is no longer, 'Is the cloud secure?' but has become, 'How does my organization take advantage of the cloud?'"

Earlier this year, at PricewaterhouseCoopers Law Firm Services Global Forum’s “Cyber Risk – A Growing Threat” session, Douglas Bloom, director of cybersecurity and forensics at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), explained that apprehension over cloud security was misplaced.

“I think there is a misconception about what cloud services mean and what it means to give third party control,” he said, adding that many legal organizations have approved cloud services for sensitive data storage.

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