As we are all aware there is countless eDiscovery software out there all vying for our attention, and more importantly, our business. Though all these software have their merits, there are undoubtedly those that far surpass their competitors in terms of capability and efficiency. One such software is RelativityOne, the latest, most innovative update to the Relativity platform.
As a company that works primarily with the Relativity software, we are lucky enough to experience the tremendous benefits working with such sophisticated software has to offer, and often in our daily discourse with clients and colleagues, we are able to reflect on the significant efficiency gains the RelativityOne software provides when handling matters of eDiscovery.
One of the most common forms of eDiscovery we handle is DSARs or Data Subject Access Requests. These are time-consuming, personnel-heavy tasks at the best of times and, due to a rising social trepidation concerning matters of GDPR and data handling, they are occupying an increasingly significant percentage of your legal department’s already limited time. The main cost driver of any DSAR process is the cost of the human hours needed to complete the project. It is therefore obvious that reducing these human hours can significantly reduce the costs of your project, and in our experience, we have found RelativityOne to be at least 25% faster (if not 50% +) than the next-best software. It is clear that the platform and software with which you choose to host your data for the DSAR process is a decision of the utmost importance, and therefore a decision we are here to help you with.
In this post you will find 7 key benefits of hosting your DSARs within RelativityOne, this is by no means an exhaustive list, and the wider benefits the platform has to offer will vary depending on the specifics of individual projects. For more information about RelativityOne check out our dedicated page!
Large File Handling: One of the first benefits you will encounter when hosting data within RelativityOne is that of large file handling. Unlike in other softwares where large documents are kept whole and take significant computing power to open, causing systems to crash and resulting in lost work time, in RelativityOne all documents are split into discrete page packets. This allows a 30-page document to be opened as 30 separate pages served to the user one after the other. This significantly reduces the stress on the system and speeds up the document review process.
Filtering & email threading: As RelativityOne is an eDiscovery platform, its capabilities go above and beyond simply hosting your data. Within the platform, the ability to filter, cull, and group data to meet the specifications of your project are features that can greatly improve the efficiency of your DSARs process. At the beginning of the DSAR process huge quantities of data are collected, most of which is surplus to that case at hand, but we would rather be safe than sorry! However, a key factor to consider when completing a DSAR is whether or not you are being manifestly excessive. This concept works both ways, and you can be penalised for supplying the data subject with too much data, especially if this data is not specifically relevant. In order to properly review your data for relevance, it is first necessary to remove all data that is definitely irrelevant. This is where filtering comes in. Within RelativityOne we can filter depending on date, keywords, concepts, and duplication (both exact and near). Removing all duplicate documents, narrowing down key data holders and date ranges, and specifying content that has affiliations with designated keywords can massively reduce the number of documents that are then passed on for relevancy review. This makes the later stages of the DSARs process much more streamlined and saves the reviewers a significant amount of time. Data can then be bunched together into email threads etc. that help ensure later consistency of redactions as well as keeping all related data together.
Review: The relevancy review is an imperative part of the DSAR process for the reasons mentioned above. The ability to further reduce the number of documents passed on for redaction based on relevancy to the case is one of the major benefits of hosting your data within a dedicated eDiscovery platform. We regularly find that filtered documents, when passed to a legal advisor to assess, often return a relevancy rate of 10% or less. Removing these low scoring documents from the collection means that only the most relevant documents go on for redaction and production. This greatly reduces the man-hours spent on the redaction process and the cost of hosting and producing the documents at the end.
Auto-redaction:Within RelativityOne there is RelativityOne Redact, a redaction tool that enables you to host and redact all within the same platform. Not only does this reduce time spent transferring data across to separate redaction tools, but it also reduces the risk of losing documents or changing document metadata in the transferring process. Within Relativity Redact there is an auto-redact feature powered by AI that allows you to automatically redact documents based on rules you input that establish what words, terms, and/or regularly occurring expressions can be automatically redacted. There is also a review tool available that makes the checking of the auto-redactions a simple and easy task once the project has been run. This is a great way to quickly redact out common names and themes within email chains for example, without having to go into each email individually and redact out all the sensitive information.
Semi-transparent redaction: There is also an option when redacting to use a semi-transparent redaction instead of applying an opaque redaction from the offset. This semi-transparent redaction allows work to easily be checked by the project manager/HR without having to remove and replace the redaction. When the project is moved on to production post QC, the transparent redactions then become opaque without any further steps being required.
Redaction tracking: Every time a document is redacted within RelativityOne the redaction and the reviewer are tracked, meaning that as a project manager you can search specifically for redactions of specific terms or redactions by specific people. This is an excellent quality control measure and allows a team leader to QC the project much more efficiently and quickly.
Speed = Savings: The overarching theme to all these separate benefits is speed. Each feature of the software has two main purposes, to increase efficiency and reduce the time taken to complete tasks. As mentioned previously, required man-hours are the biggest factor influencing the cost of your project, so we should try to reduce those where possible. Using specialist software like RelativityOne may represent a slightly higher initial investment, but that investment is swiftly earned back in time saved. Not only will the overall cost of your project be significantly reduced, but your team will have more time to work on other projects/priorities. The ease of use of dedicated software also provides a much more enjoyable working environment that your team can only benefit from.
So, there you have it, 7 benefits of hosting your DSARs in RelativityOne. Still not convinced? Read more about RelativityOne here or get in contact with us to find out how we can help you!
