My attention was drawn recently to an excellent post by Phil Saunders, the CEO of Relativity – https://www.relativity.com/blog/embracing-the-future-of-legal-data-in-2025-and-beyond/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=marketo&utm_campaign=2025-01-23-industry-vision-and-server-strategy-announcement&utm_content=eml-01&mkt_tok=NDQ3LVlCVC0yNDkAAAGYM6ulAXg7Qf1k – and I strongly recommend that you read it.
The post refers to three distinct important points for the providers and end-users involved in matters such as litigation, arbitration, investigations and more, using technology. The relevance of his three points stems from the fact that data volumes, types and complexity are growing exponentially along with more and more use cases.
The first point refers to Legal Data Intelligence – https://legaldataintelligence – about which I have written in the past. This is an initiative in which Relativity is involved along with some well known thought leaders in global legal technology which could revolutionize what we do and how we do it, in all aspects of legal technology, be it in-house, or whatever.
Secondly, the advancement of Gen AI, which has surpassed the position of being a trend and is now a clear paradigm shift, is already re-shaping the legal market and there is so much more to come. Relativity has made huge time and cost investments in producing aiR products which are already producing amazing results the like of which we have never seen before. The most talked about at the moment is aiR for Review which is revolutionising how documents are reviewed. Review has always been the costliest aspect of any case, and we are seeing case studies of 70% and 80% cost savings using aiR for Review. This product is already doing great things in the USA and UK and will only improve across the world as this year goes by. There are some other aiR products such as aiR for Privilege which again is making its mark.
The third point refers to the advancement of native cloud software. With increasing volumes, differing types of data, as well as the advancement of Gen AI, it is imperative that the eDiscovery software is capable of performance, scale and security the like of which we have never experienced. That can only be realised using high quality native cloud infrastructure.
When you are part of the global eDiscovery market, as we are, posts such as this from the CEO of the global market leader are not to be ignored. What we always look at as a priority is how the text affects South Africa and the emerging market of eDiscovery.
The first point about Legal Data Intelligence is, in essence, a hugely important set of guidelines as to best practices in various use cases. It also identifies the types of positions which should be available for in house teams and service providers. At Harrisons, we are fortunate enough to have global experience of eDiscovery and related matters over more than 20 years but that cannot be said of either other providers or in house teams in SA. We want consistency. We want best practices. We want law firms and end clients, be they large or small, all benefitting by way of access to justice. Furthermore, as industry develops and grows here, the guidance as to positions and becomes highly relevant.
Secondly, the point about Gen AI is ground breaking, particularly with aiR for Review, which is already driving down costs and saving time in other parts of the world. This would be fantastic for South Africa. At the moment there is a practical problem for SA, in that Relativity’s aiR products are not yet available here. This is not the fault of Relativity but unfortunately Microsoft South Africa have not yet installed the necessary Open AI infrastructure here to facilitate the Relativity aiR products. It is so sad that, not the first time, SA finds itself at a disadvantage against the rest of the world as far as digital technology is concerned. On the plus side, Harrisons have a solution to this important problem which can be utilised until the infrastructure is set up here. We can offer the Relativity aiR products to our SA clients via our partnerships with European providers who are contacts of ours.
The third point relates to cloud computing for eDiscovery. More than 12 years ago, as MD of an eDiscovery provider in the UK, I acquired an annual license of Relativity. In order to do that you needed the hardware infrastructure to carry the product. Because of its size, complexity and multiplicity of content, no less than 6 servers were required for Relativity. The capital cost was huge, so the popular option in those days was co-location. This was where we outsourced our requirements to a data center with massive hardware and infrastructure and paid them a monthly fee. Still a huge expense. Times have moved on and the volumes, types and complexity of data require a better solution not just for scale or speed but also for, importantly, security. The answer lies in native cloud computing.
Here in South Africa, we are one of the few who host RelativityOne, which is Relativity’s flagship cloud based product, and our instance is hosted here in SA via Microsoft Azure at its data centre in Johannesburg with a back up in Cape Town. Think of the security, first and foremost – Microsoft??? No brainer!
As far as Relativity is concerned, they still have a server based version but it lacks many of the newer features and they have now called time on it, the end of 2027. All those providers and end users with Relativity server have sufficient notice to work out their plans and of course, most will transfer to RelativityOne. Thankfully, we don’t have to do anything as we are already there.
So, a great article by Phil Saunders and definitely relevant to South Africa. Just makes us even happier to be part of the Relativity family.