When you hear “Kennedy Archives,” you might think of classified documents, high-profile investigations, and decades of public scrutiny. However, buried in the thousands of government records—many of which are poorly scanned, redacted, or handwritten—is a valuable case study in modern eDiscovery AI. 

During a live demonstration, OpenText experts showcased how OpenText™ eDiscovery uses artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to make sense of this complex collection—uncovering long-buried connections and illustrating how the same techniques can be used to speed through modern investigations and pretrial discovery.

Deciphering complexity with eDiscovery AI

PDF images filled with smudged typewriter text, blacked-out sections, conflicting narratives, and handwritten margin notes push the limits of traditional review tools.

To tackle these challenges, OpenText experts demonstrated how AI-powered capabilities in OpenText™ eDiscovery help legal teams cut through the noise:

• Use external metadata and interactive timelines to view documents by date and spot communication patterns—powered by tools like OpenText eDiscovery Hypergraph
• Extract text from image-only PDFs using optical character recognition (OCR), then analyze concepts, keyword context, and language detection with built-in tools
• Enrich documents automatically with OpenText Intelligent Classification (Magellan) to identify people, organizations, places, sentiment, PII, and more
• Transcribe audio files for fast search and analysis—so reviewers can surface key people, places, and tone without having to listen to every file
• Leverage OpenText eDiscovery Aviator GenAI to:
  • Summarize concept group labels
  • Generate contextual document summaries (leveraging knowledge beyond the dataset)
  • Rapidly summarize document sets based on a custom prompt or text from an existing document
  • Automatically classify files as Responsive or Non-Responsive with OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Review

These are not hypothetical capabilities—they’re available today and built to help legal teams triage large, messy document sets with speed and precision.

Speed to facts: Then and now

One of the more striking moments in the session came when the solution expert used a single letter from a key figure in the Kennedy investigation as the foundation for an entire line of inquiry.

Using predictive search, related documents were identified based on tone, content, and context—not just keywords. Results included documents with conflicting timelines, correspondence with emotionally charged language, and even information that appeared unrelated at first glance but actually revealed deeper thematic connections.

That same “speed to facts” is what legal teams need today. Whether reviewing 1,000 or 1 million documents, AI can help legal teams and investigators to identify key players and individuals much earlier in the process, spotlight inconsistencies, and even track sentiment shifts over time.

Lessons for today’s legal teams

• The Kennedy Archives are messy, inconsistent, and full of ambiguity—just like real-world data sets legal teams deal with today. 

• Tools that can handle incomplete, redacted, or poorly formatted material give investigators more confidence and control from the outset. 

• OpenText eDiscovery’s AI capabilities—especially concept clustering, entity extraction, and intelligent summarization—translate directly to corporate and regulatory matters. 

• Whether you’re looking for a smoking gun or trying to piece together intent, GenAI can help reduce blind spots and sharpen your strategy. 

eDiscovery AI tools enable teams to go beyond the obvious by leveraging intelligent data classification and visual communication analysis, which reveal subtle patterns and insights often missed by older systems.

Ultimately, the lessons from this case study translate directly to today’s legal challenges—helping teams apply these insights and proven AI-driven techniques to navigate even the most voluminous, ambiguous, or fragmented document sets with greater precision and strategic clarity.

Watch the full webinar to see how OpenText eDiscovery AI uncovered insights in the Kennedy Archives—and how those same techniques apply to your next matter.

Learn more about eDiscovery

The post From noise to knowledge: eDiscovery AI making sense of the Kennedy Archives appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

We're excited to announce the latest update in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.2, introducing a powerful new tool that transforms how legal teams organize and analyze evidence. Here's what's new:

OpenText eDiscovery Chronology

In modern litigation and investigations, organizing massive volumes of digital evidence chronologically to understand the who, what, where, and when of a matter can be daunting, labor-intensive, expensive, and potentially risky. The new OpenText™ eDiscovery Chronology addresses this challenge head-on. 

This interactive chronological narrative building tool helps legal teams track, organize, and analyze evidence by date—with full control of event metadata and complete audit trail capabilities. With Chronology, legal teams can leverage technology to streamline an otherwise manual task and quickly gain a clearer understanding of the sequence of events that may make or break a case. 

With integrated visual Chronology, legal teams can: 

• Easily identify potential gaps or inconsistencies in evidence earlier, reducing risks and unpleasant surprises 
• Save time by organizing events and facts without having to copy and paste text and link documents in Excel, Word, or third-party software 
• Quickly zero in on specific events or facts at any time, for faster, easier, and more thorough client reporting, early case assessment, and preparation for depositions, hearings, settlement discussions, and trial 

Chronology is a key feature that has been frequently requested by our customers and represents a significant enhancement to our platform's capabilities.

In addition to the new Chronology feature, OpenText continues to release enhancements to our existing capabilities.   

OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Key Document Summary – Now exportable! 

Initially released in April 2024, Aviator Key Document Summary empowers legal teams to create an AI-generated summary of key documents, complete with links to the documents, for improved document review efficiency and rapid insight into the case.  Now with CE 25.2, legal teams can more easily share document summaries with team members and clients with the ability to export Key Document Summaries, complete with working document links. 

Aviator Review – More intuitive than ever 

In our ongoing effort to increase efficiency and automate first-pass review, we have simplified the OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Review process to two simple steps:  

1. Input your review criteria 
2. Identify the designated document set on which you want Aviator Review to run

It is really that easy, and after the Aviator results are returned, legal teams have the option to quickly QC the document set using the “compare with human review toggle” and selecting the coded review field to be used for comparison. 

Expanded bulk redaction capabilities  

Accurate and consistent redaction of privileged, confidential, or sensitive information across all document formats is a critical component for reducing production risks.   Inadvertent production of privileged or sensitive information is a legal team’s worst nightmare.  As the type of data involved in litigation and investigations continues to become more diverse—going far beyond email and Word documents—it's essential that bulk redaction tools keep pace.  That's why we're pleased to expand OpenText eDiscovery bulk redaction to support the chat-specific redaction view.  We have also added support for Social Security Number patterns in the Bulk Redaction wizard for the native Excel viewer, the audio/video viewer (Cloud only), and the HTML chat viewer.  

 Additional new redaction capabilities include: 

• New “change redaction” functionality for the near native Excel viewer, the audio/video viewer (Cloud only), and the HTML chat viewer
• The ability to centrally manage the addition and deletion of redaction reasons from within the Review & Analysis module
• The addition of a dedicated Regular Expressions (RegEx) tester to support users writing their own customized RegEx for bulk redaction
• An improved RegEx pattern search for birthdates

These updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.2 represent our ongoing commitment to providing powerful, user-friendly tools for modern eDiscovery workflows. By introducing new functionality and enhancing existing key features, we're responding to our most frequent customer requests and helping legal teams work more efficiently and effectively than ever before, delivering better outcomes for their clients and organizations. 

The post OpenText™ eDiscovery CE 25.2: Introducing eDiscovery Chronology for enhanced evidence organization appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

OpenText™ eDiscovery (Axcelerate) is a flexible, powerful, end-to-end eDiscovery and investigations platform that helps legal teams get to facts that matter sooner and inform case strategy.

OpenText™ eDiscovery CE 25.2: Introducing eDiscovery Chronology for enhanced evidence organization

We’re excited to announce the latest update in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.2, introducing a powerful new tool that transforms how legal teams organize and analyze evidence. Here’s what’s new:

OpenText eDiscovery Chronology

In modern litigation and investigations, organizing massive volumes of digital evidence chronologically to understand the who, what, where, and when of a matter can be daunting, labor-intensive, expensive, and potentially risky. The new OpenText™ eDiscovery Chronology addresses this challenge head-on. 

This interactive chronological narrative building tool helps legal teams track, organize, and analyze evidence by date—with full control of event metadata and complete audit trail capabilities. With Chronology, legal teams can leverage technology to streamline an otherwise manual task and quickly gain a clearer understanding of the sequence of events that may make or break a case. 

With integrated visual Chronology, legal teams can: 

• Easily identify potential gaps or inconsistencies in evidence earlier, reducing risks and unpleasant surprises 
• Save time by organizing events and facts without having to copy and paste text and link documents in Excel, Word, or third-party software 
• Quickly zero in on specific events or facts at any time, for faster, easier, and more thorough client reporting, early case assessment, and preparation for depositions, hearings, settlement discussions, and trial 

Chronology is a key feature that has been frequently requested by our customers and represents a significant enhancement to our platform’s capabilities.

In addition to the new Chronology feature, OpenText continues to release enhancements to our existing capabilities.   

OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Key Document Summary – Now exportable! 

Initially released in April 2024, Aviator Key Document Summary empowers legal teams to create an AI-generated summary of key documents, complete with links to the documents, for improved document review efficiency and rapid insight into the case.  Now with CE 25.2, legal teams can more easily share document summaries with team members and clients with the ability to export Key Document Summaries, complete with working document links. 

Aviator Review – More intuitive than ever 

In our ongoing effort to increase efficiency and automate first-pass review, we have simplified the OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Review process to two simple steps:  

1. Input your review criteria 
2. Identify the designated document set on which you want Aviator Review to run

It is really that easy, and after the Aviator results are returned, legal teams have the option to quickly QC the document set using the “compare with human review toggle” and selecting the coded review field to be used for comparison. 

Expanded bulk redaction capabilities  

Accurate and consistent redaction of privileged, confidential, or sensitive information across all document formats is a critical component for reducing production risks.   Inadvertent production of privileged or sensitive information is a legal team’s worst nightmare.  As the type of data involved in litigation and investigations continues to become more diverse—going far beyond email and Word documents—it’s essential that bulk redaction tools keep pace.  That’s why we’re pleased to expand OpenText eDiscovery bulk redaction to support the chat-specific redaction view.  We have also added support for Social Security Number patterns in the Bulk Redaction wizard for the native Excel viewer, the audio/video viewer (Cloud only), and the HTML chat viewer.  

 Additional new redaction capabilities include: 

• New “change redaction” functionality for the near native Excel viewer, the audio/video viewer (Cloud only), and the HTML chat viewer
• The ability to centrally manage the addition and deletion of redaction reasons from within the Review & Analysis module
• The addition of a dedicated Regular Expressions (RegEx) tester to support users writing their own customized RegEx for bulk redaction
• An improved RegEx pattern search for birthdates

These updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.2 represent our ongoing commitment to providing powerful, user-friendly tools for modern eDiscovery workflows. By introducing new functionality and enhancing existing key features, we’re responding to our most frequent customer requests and helping legal teams work more efficiently and effectively than ever before, delivering better outcomes for their clients and organizations. 

OpenText™ eDiscovery CE 25.1: Expanding capabilities and streamlining workflows

We're excited to announce the latest updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.1, delivering enhanced GenAI functionality, improved redaction tools, and new data integration features. Here's what's new:

Transparent GenAI decision-making

Understanding OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Review document categorization just got easier with the new "Aviator Review last reasoning" field. Users can now view the LLM's reasoning directly in the results list alongside the "Aviator Review Results" column. This transparency enhancement enables better oversight of the review process, and the reasoning data can be exported for further analysis or documentation purposes.

Enhanced OpenText eDiscovery Aviator GenAI functionality

Our OpenText eDiscovery Aviator functionality, including Aviator Review, Aviator Summarization and Key Document Summary, has been upgraded to handle larger documents with greater efficiency.  At CE 25.1 enhanced chunking technology enables support for documents exceeding 180,000 tokens (approximately 60 pages) allowing legal teams to analyze and summarize lengthy documents without limitations.

Advanced redaction capabilities

We've reimagined our automated redaction functionality to provide an even more intuitive experience. The global redaction wizard has been rebuilt with user-friendly improvements.

For Cloud customers we've also extended support to the near native Excel viewer as well as the audio/video viewer and added the ability to hide redacted rows, columns, and sheets in Excel files during production, offering greater control over sensitive data management.

Enhanced audio/video timeline analysis (cloud only)

The media viewer now offers sophisticated speaker segmentation capabilities for audio and video files processed after the 25.1 release. Users can view audio streams separated by individual speakers in the timeline view, along with the ability to filter transcripts by specific speakers. This enhanced functionality makes it easier than ever to navigate and analyze audio/video content, particularly in cases involving multiple participants or lengthy recordings.

LaunchPad self-service Microsoft Exchange Online (M365) cloud connector (cloud only)

Streamlining data collection processes, CE 25.1 introduces direct self-service crawling capabilities for M365 data to Cloud applications. This new feature eliminates the time and hassle of extraneous data export and loading enabling legal teams to access critical cloud data with unprecedented ease and flexibility. To ensure M365 data remains secure this new feature incorporates secure authentication management through the new LaunchPad Source Systems page and integrates with AWS Secret Manager for secure credential storage.  

These updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 25.1 represent our ongoing commitment to providing powerful, user-friendly tools for modern eDiscovery workflows. By expanding AI capabilities, enhancing redaction tools, and streamlining data integration, we're helping legal teams work more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

December 2024 (24.4) What is new in OpenText eDiscovery (Axcelerate) 24.4 

We’re thrilled to announce the latest updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 24.4, designed to enhance your e-discovery workflows with powerful new features and improvements. Here’s a closer look at what’s new:

New OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Summarization (cloud only)

Introducing OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Summarization.  Powered by generative AI (GenAI), this document summarization functionality leverages deep learning to interpret and synthesize information from lengthy documents, providing concise summaries that help users quickly grasp context and implied meanings. With GenAI summarization, you’ll uncover deeper insights faster than ever before.

Improved OpenText eDiscovery Aviator Key Document Summary (cloud only)

With the latest enhancement to Key Document Summary, users can access the documents referenced in the AI-generated consolidated summary using a new link that displays at the bottom of the Key Document Summary panel.

Near Native Excel Viewer (cloud only)

We’re making it easier than ever to handle Excel documents with the Near Native Excel Viewer. Users can now produce redacted Excel files in both PDF and image formats, providing greater flexibility and convenience when working with sensitive data.

Enhanced audio/video (AV) transcriptions (cloud only)

See who is speaking!  With CE 24.4, new AV transcriptions automatically include generic speaker identification to make transcript review easier and faster. Other key AV transcription enhancements include the ability to filter the redaction list by redaction reason and redaction type.

Custodian Merge (cloud only)

The new Custodian Merge functionality in LaunchPad allows users to quickly remedy errors or inconsistencies in custodian names or profiles made during data loading. This feature simplifies the process, ensuring that your custodial data is always accurate and up to date.

PDF document splitting

Managing large PDF documents just got easier! Users can now select a subset of pages from a single PDF file to create sub-documents. This feature comes with tracking capabilities and the ability to delete sub-documents, giving you greater control over your data.

These updates in OpenText eDiscovery CE 24.4 are designed to enhance productivity and streamline your legal workflows. We’re committed to continuously improving our platform to meet your needs. Explore these new features today and experience the future of e-discovery!

July 2024 (24.3): What is new in OpenText Axcelerate 24.3 

Enhancing the power of Axcelerate with Aviator for GenAI Review    

With Cloud 24.3 OpenText provides Axcelerate Cloud users with the opportunity to revolutionize their review process with Aviator GenAI review.   

eDiscovery Aviator Review functionality 

Harnessing the power of large language models (LLMs), Aviator Review analyzes and categorizes large volumes of documents as responsive or non-responsive based on the input of plain language review criteria to help reduce the time and cost associated with traditional first-pass responsiveness review. Using the intuitive review criteria window, users can create and refine review instructions without legal prompt engineering expertise.  

Aviator Review also helps to control the cost of e-discovery projects by providing users with a cost estimate for each selected data set before they run it. Users can refine review criteria against smaller subsets of data as many times as required and adjust the criteria until it returns optimal results. When users are ready to run the refined review criteria against the entire corpus of the data, Aviator Review provides a comprehensive estimated review cost. 

Aviator Review can be used as a standalone tool or in conjunction with the Axcelerate technology-assisted review (TAR) protocols.    

Other Axcelerate enhancements at 24.3 include: 

Mass edit functionality  

For increased efficiency and tracking, Axcelerate now allows Case Managers and Investigators the ability to mass copy, replace, append, prepend, or use search and replace to modify field values. 

Enhanced end-to-end audio/video (A/V) workflows Axcelerate helps legal teams manage the complete lifecycle of A/V files. From ingestion, processing, transcription, searching, viewing, redaction and production, Axcelerate A/V workflows help to improve efficiency and reduce costs when manually reviewing and redacting A/V files. New A/V features include: 

• Modules are loaded individually to improve the viewer load time. 

• Users can jump to specific points in an A/V file by clicking on the corresponding words in the transcript. 

• Opus 2 support for redacted A/V files. 

LaunchPad   

The 24.3 release of LaunchPad offers faster scaling for batch processing in AWS so legal teams can get to review faster.  

Improved Excel Viewer*   

For CE 24.3 we are migrating to a new near native Microsoft® Excel® viewer service that is centrally hosted in each AWS region. The new service adds these additional Excel features: 

• Search within the document from outside of the viewer, with search hit highlighting support. 

• Sheet name redaction. 

• Ability to edit redactions. 

• Improved find and redact. 

• Support for Excel in Near Native view in Investigation applications. 

April 2024: What's new in OpenText Axcelerate 24.2

Introducing the extraordinary power of OpenText Aviator for Axcelerate  

With Cloud 24.2 OpenText provides Axcelerate Cloud users with the opportunity to leverage Generative AI for case and concept label summarization

Building on a long tradition of incorporating AI and machine learning to speed document review OpenText is thrilled to introduce the next generation of AI-enhanced productivity - Aviator for Axcelerate.  Aviator for Axcelerate enables users to create AI-generated summaries of key documents and concept group labels for improved document review efficiency and rapid insight into the case.  Leveraging the power of large language models (LLMs) Aviator for Axcelerate creates a summary of key documents, complete with document ID citations to enable users to confirm veracity.  Key document summaries help educate review teams for faster and more consistent review and deliver early insight into the evidence to help counsel assess the merits of the case.  Aviator will also assist review teams to rapidly understand concept group labels by providing intuitive plain language summaries within the review interface.

Other recent Axcelerate enhancements at 24.2 include:

• Enhanced Audio/Video (A/V) transcript and text redaction options - Search and redaction of A/V files (both video and transcribed text) is easier and more accurate providing users with the ability to:
  • View redaction overlays in both the viewer and the transcript prior to production
  • Search across timecoded transcript boundaries
  • Find portions of the video to be redacted and view results with a corresponding time stamp
  • Support archive and restore for projects in which the A/V viewer is activated
• LaunchPad enhancements – Self-service data upload and processing is easier and more powerful with additional status messaging and upload capacity (including PST files)
• Custodian management – Sync custodian data between LaunchPad and Axcelerate for greater visibility and control

January 2024: What's new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 24.1

Empower your team with more choice to maximize eDiscovery control and efficiency  

With 24.1, OpenText now provides Axcelerate Cloud users with more choices than ever to leverage the most appropriate TAR workflow to meet the time, risk, and budget constraints of each project and the preferred workflow of your team. 

OpenText eDiscovery solutions have a long history of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics to dramatically improve review efficiency and lower costs while ensuring defensibility of process.  For more than 15 years we have been the leaders in Technology Assisted Review (TAR) for eDiscovery.  While first generation TAR (TAR 1.0) relies on subject matter experts to train the algorithm on a sample data set before review begins, second generation TAR (TAR 2.0) allows the review to commence immediately, saving both time and money.  OpenText Axcelerate TAR 2.0, featuring continuous active learning (CAL), learns from all reviewer coding decisions in real time to deliver the most relevant results in the shortest amount of time. Our TAR 2.0 is also paired with a unique contextual diversity algorithm that eliminates the risk of missing relevant documents by surfacing documents from contextually diverse pockets of data.  An intuitive TAR interface and workflows reduce learning curves so your team can uncover the most relevant evidence without delay, and visualization tools allow project managers to easily track the progress of review and accurately estimate time to completion.  

Whether you choose to leverage the familiar Axcelerate TAR workflow featuring continuous machine learning or try TAR featuring CAL and our unique contextual diversity algorithm, you can be confident that you are maximizing efficiency and accuracy of TAR review for every review scenario. 

Other recent Axcelerate enhancements include: 

• End-to-end eDiscovery support for audio and video (AV) files – Get the most efficient review of voluminous AV content.  OpenText’s built-in browser-agnostic AV viewer features intuitive YouTube like navigation as well as the option to transcribe AV materials for simultaneous review of AV content along with transcribed text. Text transcription of AV content enables you to search, code, redact and produce redacted AV content along with traditional text-based files. 
• Side-by-side document comparison – Choose any two documents and Axcelerate will show you all differences between the two documents (even subtle differences) to speed review of near-duplicates as well as conceptually similar documents. 
• Self-service data processing – Choose between traditional white-glove data upload and processing to Axcelerate or our new self-service processing and upload where circumstances require immediate review of relatively small volumes of data. 
• Password bank – Speed processing time and minimize exception files by adding a list of known passwords for use during processing to attempt to decrypt password-protected Microsoft 365 and Adobe PDF documents. 

No matter the circumstances of your case, OpenText Axcelerate offers your team the power to maximize efficiency and minimize risk in every matter. 

July 2023: What's New in OpenText Axcelerate CE 23.2

The latest licensed version of OpenText^TM Axcelerate^TM is out!  This version includes some great additions, including support for Opus 2^TM cloud, document translation for licensed customers of Amazon Translate^TM, decryption during ingestion, undo for bulk tagging, and so much more!  Let’s take a closer look.

New Features for Axcelerate Review & Analysis

Document Production & Bulk Printing.  Both of these features now allow users to select various landscape options.

Visualizer.  Now includes ability to export any of the charts within Visualizer to an image format and its corresponding data to a CSV format.

Global Redaction.  Now includes an option to exclude terms. Checking the box for Exclude Terms will reveal a new section where exclusionary terms can then be entered.

Redactions.  Redaction Reasons and/or redaction associated colors can now be changed across subsets of records.  This option can be found under Manage Redactions on the Actions menu within the Analysis page. 

Once Change Redactions option is opened, a pop-up window will appear with the available options for the select records.

Opus 2.  Axcelerate now supports production records being directly ported over to Opus 2 cloud.  Once Opus 2 has been configured to connect with Axcelerate, Case Managers can then port production records over within Axcelerate via the Actions menu within the Analysis page.

A pop-up window will then appear with options for this job where the Case Manager can select production output and metadata.

Documents sent to Opus 2 can be identified via the Sent to Opus 2 Smart filter under Work Product.

Magellan Business Intelligence.  Now includes a Data Progress Report that provides a filterable report on all data sets by custodian with details as to document counts and size.

Business Intelligence also now allows for sharing custom dashboards.

Machine Translation.  Axcelerate now has the ability to generate machine translations for customers with Amazon Translate licenses (translations via Veritone is also still available).  Once Amazon Translate has been set up, case managers are able to enable it for their projects and select a target langue for translation.  Please see your OpenText Program Manager for further details.

RegEx Pattern Search.  This feature has now allow users to define pattern searches across the addressee fields as well as the Title field.

New Features for Axcelerate Ingestion/ECA

Decryption.  7-zip, office, and PDF files can now be decrypted during ingestion when a list of potential passwords is provided within the Data Source configuration node.

Parsers

Encase Parser.  Now supports chat data from MS Teams and Slack.

MS Teams Parser.  Now supports the export of Channel names, redactions, edit dates of messages, message deletions, and Urgent and Important flags.

Connectors

MS Teams Connector.  Now supports:

• the inclusion/exclusion of all channels of a Team by leaving the channel value empty. A row with a channel name supersedes a row without a channel name; and
• extracting meeting details (start time, end time, duration, initiator).

Outlook for Mac Connector.  Now supports 2016 and 2019 Outlook versions.

MS Sharepoint Connector.  Now supports indexing metadata of Recycle Bin items.

New Admin Features

OCR.  OpenText MindServer Admin^TM now allows for changing the language group that will be used by OpenText Capture^TM.  This allows for changing character sets used for OCR to accommodate multi-language data sets.

PostgreSQL. Previous version has been upgraded to version 14 with backport available to 22.4.

Undo Tagging Operations.  Administrators can now use a command-line (undo.bat) to undo bulk or single tag operations.  This operation is tracked within both the Jobs Processing Smart Filter and Document History detail.

Performance

Did you know… Axcelerate has made substantial improvements to performance over the last few years?  See below for more details:

October 2022: What's new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 22.4

In litigation, investigations and regulatory compliance matters, legal teams are under intense pressure to deliver superior results on time and within budget. Staying on top of concurrent matters requires the ability to see the overall status of projects, individual reviewer progress, and the progress of key processes such as overturn tracking and reconciliation. These insights are critical to staff projects effectively, forecast and meet deadline dates, and minimize rework by identifying bottlenecks and catching review discrepancies early. 

OpenText Axcelerate 22.4 introduces a new reporting framework based on the Magellan Business Intelligence and Reporting (MBIR) platform. All business intelligence (BI) reports have been transformed in the new platform with additional insights available. Common custom dashboards centered around review productivity will now be available by default in all projects.  

CE 22.4 also includes a new user audit logging report so review project managers can monitor review activity by user.  

The integration of MBRI eliminates the need for custom configuration of dashboards, enhances usability and provides deeper insights within individual reports with more robust menus. Axcelerate’s new reporting platform is also delivered at no additional costs – clients no longer need to pay for third-party licenses for the legacy reporting features (Qlik).  

Additional enhancements with Axcelerate CE 22.4 include: 

• A new collector for Slack data to improve collection, ingestion, processing and review efficiency of Slack data for inclusive review; 
• The on-premise availability of the advanced chat viewer for chat support (introduced in Axcelerate OnDemand in CE 22.2); and, 
• Support for the EnCase EX01 file format to enhance ingesgtion and review all relevant data, whatever the source.

April 2022: What's new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 22.2

The requirements to collect data inclusively across all sources are more pronounced than ever. The need to include data from smartphones, including chat data is now prominent for litigation and investigations.

Support for the XRY parser

Axcelerate 22.2 introduces support for the XRY parser as an additional tool for collecting smartphone data for use by legal teams to support litigation and investigations and for use by policing and investigative agencies conducting criminal or regulatory inquiries. Supported data types include SMS, MMS, loose files, chat, geolocation data and browsing data including history and searches.

Enhancements to the Cellebrite parser

The Cellebrite parser, first supported within Axcelerate in July 2021 has also been enhanced to include geo location data, browser data, and notes. Other Cellebrite enhancements include that SMS/MMS exchanged with the same participant are now consolidated in one chat and each voice call is now displayed as a separate document. 

Additional features in Axcelerate 22.2 enhance the protection of sensitive data and the ability to audit overturns.

• RegEx pattern editing – Customize existing pre-configured RegEx patterns by editing an existing pattern instead of creating from scratch. This allows custom patterns to be fully supported with their own search filter by replacing an existing pattern that is already embedded in the search filters to streamline the detection and redaction of sensitive data to aid compliance with data privacy laws, improve PII detection for subject rights requests including DSARs and identify affected data in breach response investigations.
• Overturn reporting links to source data – Derive maximum value from overturn reporting by viewing the overturned documents in the results list to see the specific tagging changes. Filter by individual reviewer and key criteria including privilege, responsiveness and issues to see where overturns are occurring to catch issues early and avoid rework later. Instead of just seeing that overturns have occurred, the source data can be easily accessed and audited for enhanced insights.

January 2021: What’s new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 21.4 

Greater accuracy in detecting personal data is more important than ever due to cyber security threats, such as data breaches, data privacy mandates and escalating regulatory compliance requirements. To mitigate risk to the organization, swift and accurate identification of personal data is critical. However, many organizations approach it ad hoc, necessitating an efficient approach. 

Axcelerate CE 21.4 introduces enhanced RegEx for easier, faster and greater accuracy in PII detection: 

• RegEx has been decoupled from the redaction utilities for more direct access within Axcelerate 21.4. The number of pre-configured strings for personal data have been expanded. This makes it faster and easier to discover and redact sensitive data within the review process to avoid passing unredacted personal data to opposing council, to find and isolate personal data involved in data breaches, to redact the data of third parties as part of subject rights requests, and more.  

Additional features in Axcelerate CE 21.4 designed to improve review efficiency and drive down the cost of eDiscovery include: 

• Overturn reporting to expedite review by helping case managers to catch coding inconsistencies early on to standardize coding decisions and avoid significant rework later.   
• Chat attachment previews to address the fact that opening individual documents to assess their content is among the most time-consuming of review tasks. Chat attachment previews allow reviewers to focus their time on attachments that appear to be relevant and avoid time inspecting attachments that are not relevant thereby substantially improving chat data review efficiency. 

June 2021: What's new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 21.2

Legal teams and law firms are under pressure to contain the cost of eDiscovery against rising data volumes and new forms of data such as chat. Axcelerate CE 21.2 provides enhanced control and automation to start review sooner and enhanced chat, data sorting, and batching capabilities to complete review faster.

Update 1: Enhanced control and automation to start review sooner

Driving down the cost of eDiscovery requires a holistic approach to eliminating process lags and maximizing efficiency across all stages of a project. Axcelerate CE 21.2 introduces enhancements to improve control and automation of left-side tasks on the EDRM to get to review sooner:

• Customize project welcome emails to better provide context for reviewers (available for Axcelerate OnDemand and Private Cloud);
• Run searches as jobs to keep working while large searches run in the background; and,
• Automatically decrypt Azure® RMS data via the Microsoft® Information Protection SDK® to quickly expose this data for processing.

Update 2: New tools to complete review faster

Review comprises 70% of total eDiscovery project costs. Every capability that helps speed the review process has a material impact on containing costs. Axcelerate CE 21.2 includes the following features to complete review faster:

• Sort data by word count to better eliminate non-relevant data such as images with alt text; and,
• Group batches by any data field to better align data to the expertise of individual reviewers.

Update 3: Tame unwieldy chat data

Reviewing chat data can take significantly longer than other forms of data because of its volume and structure. Axcelerate CE 21.2 introduces new capabilities to review chat data faster with greater precision:

• Break down chat histories into manageable blocks of time to narrow the volume of data that requires review and make review easier;
• See chat attachments such as links, images and audio/video files to include related data faster; and,
• Connect loose chat files for easier inclusion.

Axcelerate drives down the cost of eDiscovery through analytics and automation. Axcelerate CE 21.2 builds on these capabilities to further help legal teams and law firms to streamline processes before review can begin and to help speed review processes as well.

For more information please visit the OpenText Axcelerate product page, the OpenText Discovery page or the Axcelerate – driving down the cost of eDiscovery video.

March 2021: What’s new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 21.1

Update 1: Axcelerate Investigation drives faster and richer ECA – now available OnDemand  

The Axcelerate Investigation platform–first released in October 2020 and part of the integrated OpenText™ Axcelerate™ investigation and eDiscovery solution–goes beyond traditional ECA tools to assist teams to find the facts quickly for active or anticipated litigation and investigations. Axcelerate Investigation combines robust collection, processing and culling with powerful front-loaded analytics in a single solution. Legal teams gain early insight into their data leveraging advanced analytics, minimize resources and costs, and maximize efficiency. A single platform, Axcelerate Investigation reduces potentially error-prone data transfers common with multiple point solutions and also reduces–or eliminates altogether–time-consuming and costly downstream document review costs. When full review and production of data is warranted, all data and work product can be automatically uploaded directly from Axcelerate Investigation to Axcelerate Review & Analysis OnDemand.

Update 2: Axcelerate Visualizer Heat Maps introduce multi-factor visual analytics

Axcelerate Visualizer, first introduced in October 2020, brings data analytics into focus for rapid insight into matters of all sizes and complexity. Axcelerate Visualizer Heat Maps expand on these capabilities by introducing flexible visual associations amongst analytics tools for greater visibility into the relationships, patterns and anomalies within the data.

Axcelerate Visualizer Heat Maps expand on these capabilities by introducing flexible visual associations amongst analytics tools for greater visibility into the relationships, patterns and anomalies within the data. Visualizer Heat Maps present new opportunities for insights that were previously impossible, or highly manual and time-consuming to derive. For example, reviewers can see file types overlaid with MIME types, or file sizes etc. for a multi-dimensional understanding of data or fact versus opinion ratings can be superimposed by custodian to better understand which custodians are prone to unsubstantiated assertions, and more.

Update 3: Near native Excel, additional efficiency enhancements and expanded connectors

Axcelerate CE 21.1 also introduces the integrated conversion of Excel files to expedite and simplify the review and redaction of this often-critical file type. Axcelerate CE 21.1 adds extensive and flexible redaction capabilities to help assure that privileged, personal or other sensitive data within Excel files can be effectively remediated with greater ease and assurance.

Other review efficiency enhancements in Axcelerate CE 21.1 include new tools for reviewing data in context so reviewers can choose how they want data to be ordered (e.g. by Bates number), and enhancements to the review progress and reviewer productivity reports so project leads can better deliver projects on time and within budget. Axcelerate’s extensive data source connectors have been expanded further with CE 21.1 – new connectors for WebDAV™ / Druva™, Google™ Calendar™, Google™ Cloud Storage™ and AWS™ S3™ have been added.

November 2020: What’s new in OpenText Axcelerate CE 20.4

Update 1: Axcelerate Investigation drives faster and more comprehensive early case analysis

With an increase in regulations, ESI types and data volumes, and data privacy mandates, efficiently assessing data and finding the information that will tell the story quickly yet comprehensively is critical to making decisions early on to manage costs and risk.

The all-new Axcelerate Investigation platform, part of the integrated OpenText™ Axcelerate™ investigation and eDiscovery solution, goes beyond traditional ECA tools to find the facts quickly for active or anticipated litigation. Axcelerate Investigation drives effective early case assessment and analysis by combining data collection, processing and culling capabilities with front-ended analytics to swiftly find facts and patterns for rapid insight and decision-making. These include stackable metadata filters, powerful text analytics and predictive analytics. If a full document review is warranted, data can be transferred seamlessly to the full Axcelerate cloud.

Axcelerate Investigation is also ideally suited to support a broad range of other types of investigations such as compliance, human resources, M&A due diligence, C-suite vetting and more.

Update 2: Axcelerate Visualizer further streamlines workflow

Axcelerate’s new Visualizer dashboard brings data analytics into focus for rapid insight into matters of all sizes and complexity. The new feature allows reviewers to expedite the ability to drill into the analytics faster to find facts and uncover responsive data with greater speed and precision. Axcelerate Visualizer incorporates communications, custodians, file mime types, office flags, phrase analytics, and more.

Axcelerate Visualizer is highly customizable. Reviewers and investigators can choose what data is displayed, how data is presented (e.g. bar graph, pie chart, etc.) and the level of detail for each vantage point into Axcelerate’s analytics. Axcelerate Visualizer is available across the Axcelerate platform including Axcelerate Investigation and Axcelerate Review and Analysis.

Update 3: Axcelerate introduces support for chat

With an increasingly remote workforce, chat has become a prolific part of organizational communications. Axcelerate CE 20.4 introduces the ability to parse data from chat platforms by transposing the data to align to the Axcelerate chat format.

Once ingested into Axcelerate, chat data and related content such as reactions and edits are displayed in a familiar chat style layout for easy review. What’s more is that Axcelerate treats chat like any other potentially critical data. Chat data is integrated into Axcelerate’s smart filters with its own dedicated filter and analyzed in tandem with all other data as part of concept groups, phrase analysis, text analytics and predictive analytics.

Axcelerate CE 20.4 includes a pre-configured parser for Microsoft® Teams® and a generic chat parser for virtually any other chat platform. Additional pre-configured parsers will be rolled out with subsequent releases.

Update 4: Additional reporting, usability, performance and connectors

Axcelerate CE 20.4 also includes new reports to quickly assess reviewer productivity and review progress to improve the ability to manage projects and address bottlenecks. PST extraction has also been enhanced for improved speed and reliability and export templates have been introduced to reduce effort on repeated workflows with similar criteria. New connectors for Gmail™ and Google™ Drive™ are also included to expand Axcelerate’s reach across data sources.

April 2020: What’s new in OpenText Axcelerate Cloud Edition (CE) 20.2

Update 1: New UI simplifies navigation

The new UI provides more than a usable interface. It surfaces contextual insights in a highly visual display that is easy to navigate and allows reviewers to quickly understand the content under review.

Update 2: New entity identification with OpenText Magellan integration

Axcelerate Release 16 EP7 introduced integration with OpenText™ Magellan™ text analytics for sentiment analysis and automated entity identification for people and places. Auto-identification and extraction of entities (organizations) help reviewers answer “who” and “where” questions and home in on relevant content faster.

Enrichment jobs now automatically enhance documents for sentiment and all types of entities with a single operation. In addition to sentiment tonality pie charts, sentiment indicators are automatically ranked within documents so reviewers can zero in on the top positive and negative statements within each document. Statements are also rated as to whether they are based on opinions or facts to help reviewers assess the voracity of interesting comments.

Update 3: Automated document summaries powered by Magellan

Automated document summaries make the efficient review more efficient, eliminating the need to open individual files and review them to figure out what they are about. Individual sentences are assessed within each document and the most representative content is assembled into a concise paragraph for quick insights.

Update 4: “Find more like me” with Predictive Search

Axcelerate’s new Predictive Search provides a “find more like me” capability to easily home in on relevant content. Documents that are known in advance to be highly relevant, or the best exemplars uncovered in initial search results, are compared against the entire corpus to quickly surface documents with similar content. Predictive Search can also be used as a QC tool to quickly assess whether the final discovery set is inclusive of all relevant content.

Update 5: Negative proximity operator

The new negative proximity operator is a powerful tool for isolating homonyms and terms that often appear in signature lines, such as attorney-client privileged, enhancing efficiency and search effectiveness by reducing, or eliminating altogether, false positives, thus minimizing the number of documents that require review. Reviewers can stipulate that keywords have to be within a specified number of words to other keywords to be surfaced as a positive hit, substantially reducing false hits.

Axcelerate CE 20.2 delivers an intuitive UI with simplified navigation and Predictive Search, enhanced entity extraction, document summaries, and a negative proximity operator each of which contribute to review efficiency. Together they deliver a multiplier effect to further elevate Axcelerate as a leading end-to-end eDiscovery solution on a single platform.

Previous updates

November 2019: What’s new in Axcelerate, EnCase eDiscovery, and Decisiv Release 16 EP7

July 2019: What’s new in Axcelerate and EnCase eDiscovery Release 16

Learn more about eDiscovery

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In a world where speed is paramount and data volumes and complexity continue to grow exponentially, time is of the essence. Legal professionals looking to cut through vast quantities of data quickly, whether to reduce risk by identifying key evidence for early data-driven decisions or simply sort responsive from non-responsive data, are constantly looking for ways to streamline their processes and improve efficiency. That's where Aviator Review comes in—At CE 24.3, eDiscovery's new gen AI review tool is set to revolutionize the way legal professionals conduct document review. 

Aviator Review, fueled by a large language model (LLM) technology, will change how you approach e-discovery. With its lightning-fast review capabilities, Aviator Review significantly reduces the time and costs associated with traditional document review processes. Aviator Review can quickly analyze and categorize large volumes of documents, allowing you to get to the facts faster and make informed decisions with confidence. 

Because we know how important cost control is for e-discovery projects, Aviator Review includes the unique ability to refine your review criteria and test it against a subset of data as many times as required.  Once you are happy with the criteria, Aviator will provide a cost estimate before running the criteria across the entire corpus, so you know what the review will cost ahead of time. 

Aviator Review can be used as a standalone tool or in conjunction with OpenText eDiscovery’s technology-assisted review (TAR) protocols, including TAR 2.0 featuring continuous active learning and a companion contextual diversity algorithm that ensures that nothing is overlooked, as well as human assisted review (HAR) leveraging your own team or the expertise of the OpenText Managed Review team.    

Developed by a company with a long history of market leadership in AI for legal, including pioneering concept search and predictive coding for e-discovery, Aviator Review is backed by a team of experts who understand the unique challenges faced by legal professionals. With Aviator Review, you can trust that you are leveraging cutting-edge technology to enhance your e-discovery process and drive better outcomes without compromising defensibility or security. 

Don't let outdated manual review processes hold you back. Embrace the future of e-discovery with Aviator Review and experience the benefits of faster review, lower costs, quicker time to facts, and improved efficiency. Upgrade your e-discovery workflow with Aviator Review and take efficiency to new heights. 

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Impact of GenAI on Legal Tech

Generative AI – leveraging the power of large language models (LLMs) to create content – is a high-priority topic for both in-house and law firm legal professionals. As legal practitioners struggle with the increasing volume and complexity of data, shrinking budgets, increasing regulatory scrutiny, and expanded responsibilities in risk management, they have no choice but to leverage technology to help improve outcomes, lower costs, and control risk. The disruptive and lasting impact that generative AI will have on the way that the legal profession will evolve over the next few years cannot be overstated. 

A recent study conducted by OpenText in collaboration with the Corporate Counsel Business Journal confirmed that many legal leaders are planning to apply generative AI to their work activities. The top use case for Gen AI, cited by 42% of respondents, is document summarization.  When asked about eDiscovery-specific tasks, 41% of respondents said they were most comfortable using generative AI to create summaries or narratives to educate reviewers on case details.

Old ways of carrying out legal and related administrative tasks will fall away as forward-thinking practitioners embrace the power of large language models to automate formerly cumbersome and often repetitive low-value tasks, freeing up time to allow them to focus on high-value work. 

A new AI platform for legal practitioners

With CE 24.2, OpenText is thrilled to announce the launch of OpenText eDiscovery Aviator, a platform that brings GenAI to legal practitioners who want to proactively manage risks and costs while delivering better outcomes. The first application of this new technology is in OpenText Axcelerate. OpenText eDiscovery Aviator will allow users to access AI-generated summaries of key documents to improve document review efficiency and deliver rapid insight into the case.

Users can easily enter the text of a complaint or other key document into the Aviator window within Axcelerate, and then OpenText eDiscovery Aviator leverages Amazon Bedrock to deliver an easily digestible and verifiable summary of key documents. Armed with the key document summary review teams get a head-start on document review to reduce time and costs and increase accuracy. With CE 24.2, OpenText eDiscovery Aviator will also generate intuitive plain language summaries of Axcelerate concept labels to further speed review and deliver rapid insight into concepts in the data set.

The initial OpenText eDiscovery Aviator CE 24.2 addresses the document summarization key use case in the eDiscovery workflow. With OpenText eDiscovery Aviator, legal practitioners and their clients will: 

• Gain rapid insight into key documents and concepts in large data sets.
• Uncover key data sooner with AI-generated summaries of key documents to inform early case assessment and review strategy and prioritization for investigations, litigation, and regulatory compliance matters.
• Verify the accuracy of results with linked document citations to documents within the client data set.
• Improve user experience with intuitive AI-generated summaries of concept group labels.

OpenText is a long-time leader in the responsible, defensible, and effective deployment of AI for eDiscovery applications– from the introduction of predictive coding in 2009 to the integration of textual analytics for automated document summaries, entity detection, sentiment analysis, automated PII detection and redaction, and more. OpenText eDiscovery Aviator, leveraging generative AI and large language models, is the next step in the evolution of AI to automate legal workflows to help practitioners proactively manage risks and costs and deliver better outcomes.

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There are a number of ways to understand the “cost” of something, and most definitions of the term begin with money as the chief factor. For example: Cost is “the amount is money needed to buy, do, or make something.” But business leaders know that money is only one factor in calculating the total cost of something needed for the business to run as planned. Time, energy, and labor – in other words, “efficiency” – are just as important in understanding cost.  

All that may seem obvious to you. But when it comes to eDiscovery solutions, the overall efficiency of the solutions and services is too often overlooked. Vendors may offer attractive sounding discounts for hourly review rates or data hosting fees , but when eDiscovery review and service teams are not aligned with client efficiency goals (e.g., they are incented to process, host, and review more documents than are necessary, or they do not know how to leverage advanced technology-assisted review (TAR) to achieve maximum defensibility and efficiency) those inefficiencies obliterate the discount, and can dramatically add to the total cost of review. 

For legal teams to increase their effectiveness and overall value as strategic players in partnership with the C-suite, they need to understand and avoid the traps as they evaluate eDiscovery technology and services to ensure they are getting maximum value for their eDiscovery dollar.  

Here are a few tips and best practices for choosing an eDiscovery vendor. 

The many forms of time inefficiency 

It can be tricky to uncover inefficiencies within service providers’ approaches to eDiscovery document review. To avoid inefficiencies leading to higher cost (and risk) consider the following forms of time inefficiencies. 

Services time 

Does your service provider offer transparent pricing on how services time will be spent? Do they perform simple tasks that could be self-served or are they using inefficient methods or technology? 

Review time 

Efficient service providers typically charge one dollar in services for every three dollars in access to technology. Many service providers do not use optimal methods or technology; using large review teams to conduct linear review rather than leveraging advanced conceptual and textual analytics and TAR, and charge five to ten times as much in services time and risk parameters of your project to maximize efficiency without compromising review quality or defensibility. (See how to maximize document review efficiency with rapid analytics.) 

Time to assess vendors 

If you regularly conduct vendor assessments from scratch for each project, it may be time to consider a strategic partnership with a single vendor who has deep expertise in maximizing the value of their own proprietary technology. Costs associated with vetting multiple vendors to each new project can add up, which negates the efficiencies associated with using a single vendor already familiar with your organization’s data and its business.  

There are many more questions related to time-cost-risk evaluation, which you can explore in the eBook “Time is Money.”  

Other factors to consider in choosing an eDiscovery provider 

Many vendors rely on third-party software that they try adapting to their clients’ needs. Your results will improve if you choose a vendor who has developed their own technology and demonstrate a track record of success in using it. Capable vendors have methods for tailoring their processes to your specific needs and can help you find facts faster through skilled use of TAR techniques. 

Choose a vendor that offers defensible workflows that will hold up in court, and who set metrical goals at the beginning of a project and provide progress reports along the way. 

If you would like to learn more about document review best practices and eDiscovery capabilities for your corporate legal department, see the resources available from OpenText here.  

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Modern investigations are intensely demanding in every sense of the word. Whether driven by whistleblower allegations, regulatory compliance, or HR issues, the potential fallout for your organization makes taking swift and thorough action to minimize risk, costs and potential litigation paramount.

Recently, we partnered with Legal Business[2] in a survey to find out just how complex and challenging investigations are for DACH region organizations and how they are addressing them. Read OpenText’s position paper, Addressing Investigation Challenges in the DACH Region, for a more in-depth look at these issues.   

Unique investigation challenges and complexity in the DACH region

The results – that investigations are very complex – aren’t surprising. German, Austrian and Swiss organizations must now observe stricter data protection law requirements through regulations such as the GDPR when conducting an internal investigation. The Workers Councils also have a significant input into how investigations involving employees are undertaken and, the EU Whistleblower Directive has recently promoted protections for corporate whistleblowers through the mandate that EU member countries apply the directive to their national law.

In terms of complexity of issues, respondents cited conduct of the business (38%) as top, antitrust investigations (36%) and internal issues related to employee conduct (34%). Lawsuits filed by another organization (23%) and investigations in response to whistleblower allegations (21.3%) are also among the most complex in terms of the issues involved.

Preparing for investigations

Unfortunately, many organizations don’t possess the understanding of sound investigative processes or have the ability to leverage technology and expertise to effectively address these challenges. As detailed in our OpenText paper, the survey found that organizations are bringing in external investigation experts due to lack of expertise in both internal and regulatory investigations.

Checklist for selecting a corporate investigations provider

1 - Comprehensive eDiscovery software and services

Investigations have become one of the most common use cases for eDiscovery technology and workflows. It is also the second most common eDiscovery use case (trailing only litigation) with 83.2% of respondents identifying it as a use case to which they apply eDiscovery technology and workflows. [2]

Given this frequency, it’s important to select a corporate investigations provider that has both a comprehensive and sophisticated advanced analytics AI-driven eDiscovery solution to support the entire investigative process, from collections and forensics through conclusion, and a team that understands how to best apply the technology to reduce time, cost and risks.

2 - Global footprint

Regardless of where investigations start, the evidence could be located anywhere, in any country, and in any language. It’s important to select a corporate investigations provider that is a global organization and can support the investigation, regardless of where the trail to the truth takes you.

3 - Local presence

The presence of experts physically located within DACH countries who understand local laws, customs and culture of each country is equally important. Investigations in Germany, for example, are conducted differently than they are anywhere else in the world, and, in many cases, the data cannot leave the country.

4 - Language auto-detection and translation capabilities

The EU has 24 official languages, and many investigations are likely to involve evidence in multiple languages. It’s important to select a corporate investigations provider that provides the ability to auto-detect foreign languages and translate those documents to a common language to expedite investigations.

5 - Tools to surface facts faster

The number and complexity of litigation and investigations continues to grow as does the need to get faster access to the facts. Analytics approaches married to the right technology can rapidly drive case strategy for “fight or flight” decisions based on risks and costs.

6 - Cost-reduction tools  

Legal and investigation teams are under increasing pressure to deliver results quickly but also within budget. Applying advanced technology solutions that included front-loaded analytics to surface relevant information more quickly, along with machine learning approaches such as technology-assisted review (TAR), can help reduce costs.

7 - Risk mitigation tools  

Organizations must also combat increasing risks. The larger the team, the higher the risk of losing sight of key information or inadvertently producing a privileged, confidential or sensitive document. It’s important to select a provider that can leverage technology, a lean team and best practices to minimize risks, from automated data detection capabilities (both RegEx and people, place and locations) and automated redaction capabilities to automated quality control (QC).

8 - Frictionless time to facts

Aligning investigation methods to requirements quickly without wasting time on unnecessary roadblocks is vital to conducting an efficient and effective investigation. Select a corporate investigations provider that can make data near-immediately accessible via its eDiscovery platform to the investigative team as soon as the project starts.

Prepare early

The ability to uncover risk has never been more important. DACH region organizations have unique requirements and it’s important to consider specific factors when selecting a corporate investigations provider. Risks, either known or not yet well understood, can be found if your organization understands how to get the right help to look for them!

Learn more in OpenText’s paper, Addressing Investigation Challenges in the DACH Region.  

[1] Legal Business and OpenText survey.

[2] A 2023 State of the Industry Report published by eDiscovery Today.

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With the proliferation of electronic data, the vast majority of business communication is now in electronic format.  It is not surprising that the use cases for eDiscovery technology have expanded beyond the typical litigation review for production use cases.  In the eDiscovery Today 2023 State of the Industry Report, survey respondents reported that the expanded use cases for eDiscovery technology and workflows ranged from arbitration (51%) and investigations (83%) to breach incidence responses (47%), to privacy requests (42%), government information requests (48%) and HSR Second Requests (43%). 

Document review is not a one-size-fits-all approach

While the basics of eDiscovery technology is applicable across this vast spectrum of use cases—that is, identify, preserve, collect, process, review, analyze and produce electronic data, a one-size-fits-all approach to document review itself will not guarantee optimized outcomes for every case, whether litigation or investigations or emerging use cases.

Document review and analysis has made many advancements over linear review in the past decade, with growing adoption of analytics and technology-assisted review, a form of machine learning, which is exponentially faster (and more accurate) than a traditional linear review. However, is it the optimal approach in every document review situation?

The simple answer is no, and here’s why: Document review projects have different objectives, timelines, budgets and risk tolerance. The objective of an outgoing review for production is not the same as that of a third-party subpoena or an HSR second request response or a data breach analysis. 

Optimal review (e.g., lowest cost and shortest timeline within acceptable risk parameters) requires the right technology and the right review methods.

OpenText offers a smarter approach to document review: here’s what to ask

By employing a three-dimensional analysis of the goals, risk tolerance and time and cost parameters for every project – and matching those factors with the most efficient and effective review methodologies –OpenText^TM Managed Review balances time, cost, and risk without tradeoffs.

Here are some questions to think about for your next document review project – and whether you are employing the approach that best matches your case objectives.

1. Do you need absolute certainty that every potentially responsive document is reviewed (and produced if not privileged or sensitive)?  

If yes, you may need to set eyes on every single document in the collection with a linear review. Though time-consuming and expensive, it can be done for relatively small collection of highly relevant and highly sensitive documents. It should be noted that linear review of large datasets is often conducted by large teams of reviewers to expedite timelines. The result is often decreased review quality due to inconsistent coding and reviewer fatigue.   

2. Is it necessary to review all documents being produced, but not set eyes on every document in the collection? 

In outgoing reviews for production in civil litigation, in which the producing party demands the certainty of knowing that the review team has put eyes on every document being produced to protect privileged and confidential information from inadvertent production, it’s often not necessary to set eyes on every document in the collection. Using TAR managed review to surface only those documents most likely to be relevant for review is a substantially less expensive and faster method than linear review. TAR allows review teams to leave substantial portions of the document collection unreviewed – those containing documents deemed by the TAR algorithm as unlikely to be responsive. Documents coded responsive during the TAR workflow will almost always be subject to a secondary quality control (QC) privilege review either using a linear review or TAR-assisted QC to protect attorney-client privilege and other sensitive data.

3. Is cost-certainty your most important objective?   

Where the client demands absolute certainty and protection against cost overruns prior to the start of the review, OpenText^TM offers a fixed-fee TAR review in which OpenText assumes the risk of any cost overruns in exchange for a small premium as compared to a regular TAR review.

4. Is it possible to confidently produce documents without setting eyes on every document marked for production? 

In cases such as third-party subpoenas, HSR second requests, EC RFIs and SRR reviews, including DSARs, it’s often unnecessary for the review team to put eyes on every document being produced.  Furthermore, the cost and time pressures in these scenarios often necessitate an approach that is more efficient than even the best TAR review. 

OpenText Rapid Analytic Investigative Review (RAIR) is an innovative review methodology to maximize efficiency without increasing risk beyond acceptable levels by using advanced analytics to locate characteristically similar sets of documents that can confidently be managed as a group for purposes of production, which keep sensitive data protected.  By using the RAIR methodology the team can substantially reduce the time and cost associated with document review without adding unacceptable levels of risk in appropriate circumstances. 

5. Is a RAIR review your best option, but cost-certainty is paramount?

Where the team has identified a RAIR review as the optimal method of review, but the client needs absolute cost-certainty at the outset, OpenText offers a fixed-fee RAIR review in which OpenText charges a small premium and assumes the risk of any cost overruns.

6. Where risk tolerance necessitates an eyes-on review of documents being produced, how can the time and cost of a TAR review be minimized?

Even where the objectives and risk tolerance of the matter dictate that it is necessary to review every document being produced and that TAR is, therefore, the preferred method of review, it is still possible to leverage RAIR methodology to accelerate the TAR review. We call this RAIR-enhanced TAR review. For example, in an outgoing review for production in litigation where the document collection is very large, RAIR methodology can be used to bulk code large portions of the collection as non-responsive (e.g. culling generic newsletters, marketing emails, etc.) and can also be used to rapidly identify key responsive documents to give the TAR review a head-start before it even begins.  The result is an accelerated, more efficient TAR process without increased risk.

7. Is your primary objective to identify and report on personal information that may have been exposed in a data breach?

RAIR methodology also has an important role in maximizing the efficiency of data breach analysis and response.  Even though the goals of breach response analysis and reporting are substantially different from the previously discussed scenarios, RAIR for early data analysis can be used to readily eliminate portions of data unlikely to contain personal or confidential information.  With timelines for cyber incident reporting in the United States shrinking to 72 hours for some sectors the time-savings offered by using RAIR for early data analysis are more critical than ever.

Click here to learn more about how OpenText Managed Review can optimize outcomes for every scenario.

And don’t miss these additional resources: 

• Position paper: “Maximizing document review efficiency with rapid analytic investigative review
• Live OpenText and ACEDs webinar “Optimizing Document Review for Today’s Expanding Discovery Use Cases” on February 21, 2023 at 1 PM ET
• Managed Review cost-savings calculator

The post Sometimes in eDiscovery more is better appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. It’s important to exercise sound cybersecurity best practices to protect your organization’s sensitive and valuable information against outside hackers and cybercriminals that are always identifying new ways to get to your data. 

However, the biggest threats to your organization are often within your organization, not outside. While they are often not the primary focus of cybersecurity awareness, insider threats are a major cause of data breaches and cyber incidents within organizations today. Curbing those insider threats takes a holistic approach that protects your sensitive and valuable data up front, while also responding quickly to threats that are suspected or have been identified. 

Challenges to Protecting Your Organization’s Sensitive Data 

Protecting your sensitive and valuable data has never been more challenging, especially in a time with so many remote workers and The Great Resignation causing a reshuffling among workforces. Here are a few stats* to illustrate the challenges to protecting your organization’s sensitive and valuable data: 

• 83% of former employees said they continued accessing accounts from their previous employer after leaving the company. 
• 56% of former employees said they had used their continued digital access to harm their former employer. 
• 71% of IT decision makers in the US and UK said the Great Resignation has increased security risks at their companies. 
• 40% of American employees say they had taken data with them with they left their old jobs. 
• 74% of employers said they have been negatively impacted by an employee breaching their digital security. 

One of the risks associated with insider threats is the potential for employees to access and steal your organization’s intellectual property.   Even if the organization seeks and is granted relief by a court, the costs to litigate can be considerable. 

A Holistic Approach to Curbing Insider Threats 

Addressing insider threats today requires a combination of up-front measures to protect your data plus investigative best practices to quickly find the answers to determine what was exposed and what to do about it. Here are some best practices to protect your organization against insider threats: 

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 

One of the biggest threats to the security of your data and documents is data proliferation – which has accelerated since the pandemic increased the number of remote workers in organizations. The best way to address that threat is the implementation of a virtual desktop infrastructure that controls access to the virtual desktop and prohibits storage of data and documents within remote endpoints, maintaining that data on enterprise servers instead. 

Policies for Remote Device Use 

The increased use of mobile devices may boost productivity, but it also increases risks to threats – both internal and external. Many organizations support the use of BYOD (bring your own device) mobile devices, but many of them don’t establish clear policies that set usage guidelines and clearly communicate the organization’s rights and interests in protecting their information. Those rights and interests may extend to the use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as Amazon’s Alexa when working at home, so it’s important to establish policies for the use of mobile and IoT devices that support your investigative rights to those devices if malfeasance is suspected. 

Enterprise Content Management Security 

The use of enterprise content management (ECM) systems to manage and protect your organization’s data is one of the best measures you can take to prevent insider attacks. ECM system security measures that protect your data can include: 

• Two-Factor Authentication: An extra layer of security if login credentials are compromised. 

• Document Level Authorization: Security to manage rights at the document level and ensure access to your most sensitive and valuable documents is limited to authorized personnel. 
• Encryption At Rest: Encrypting files at rest protects documents if the system is bypassed. 
• Intrusion Detection: ECM activity monitoring can provide notifications if authorized users attempt to access documents without authorization. 

Proven Investigative Workflows 

Conducting internal investigations discreetly, quickly and comprehensively is a task for experienced investigators with the right qualifications and certifications. An experienced investigations team understands how to leverage technology and proven investigative workflows to conduct the investigation quickly and effectively. 

Internal investigations follow their own unique eDiscovery workflow that involves 1) custodian and data identification, 2) collecting potentially responsive data in a forensically sound manner, 3) applying advanced review and analytics techniques and technology to identify important evidence quickly, 4) quality assurance (QA) to ensure any data contradictory to the findings is identified and addressed, and 5) preparing a clear and concise report of the findings. 

Time is of the essence when you’re looking to minimize the risk and damage associated with insider bad acts. Proven investigative workflows that effectively leverage technology position your organization to reduce or eliminate litigation expenses downstream while preparing your organization for downstream litigation if it is necessary. 

Conclusion 

Insider threats are often the forgotten threats to your organization’s sensitive and valuable information, but they are no less important, and the risks are just as great as they are with outside threats. There is no single measure that can address insider threats, but a holistic approach to address them which includes a virtual desktop infrastructure to centralize data for protection, policies for remote device use, implementation of an ECM system to maximize security measures for your data – plus the use of experienced investigators utilizing proven investigative workflows when insider bad acts are expected – will provide maximum protection for your organization against insider threats. 

For more information on OpenText™ Recon Investigations Services, click here. 

*Stats Sourced From eDiscovery Today 

The post Curbing Insider Threats Today Requires a Holistic Approach  appeared first on OpenText Blogs.

IT, info-security, compliance, HR and business unit leaders are increasingly tasked with collaborating with their legal department colleagues to mitigate legal risk to the organization, whether promulgated by litigation, regulatory investigations, or suspicions of internal wrongdoing such as IP theft, cybersecurity breaches and data privacy compliance. 

Join us at the Legal Tech track at OpenText^TM World 2022 in Las Vegas, where we’ll explore the increasing importance of collaboration amongst legal leaders and their business counterparts in applying the right technology, processes and expertise to optimize workflow, efficiency and security of critical legal content. 

OpenText Legal Tech 

In the Legal Tech sessions, we will explore the increasing importance of collaboration amongst legal leaders and their IT and business counterparts in applying the right technology, processes and expertise to optimize workflow, efficiency and security of critical legal content. Legal leaders will gain a better understanding of how to leverage technology and process to optimize results. Non-legal stakeholders will come away with a more in-depth understanding of legal technology applications and use cases to improve efficiency, lower risks and costs, and align with corporate IT initiatives. 

Connect with Legal Tech experts in your preferred format 

We will also be hosting several types of sessions designed to help you get the information you need in the format you prefer.  

Workshop sessions will focus on “how to” topics such as “how to optimize your workflows” or “how to increase productivity” and will give you hands-on experience exploring a technical topic. Workshops will be small and interactive sessions where you can engage with an expert panel, see demos, ask questions and get the answers you need to discover your information advantage.  

During the roundtable sessions, we’ll share tips and tricks, expert advice, or relevant industry trends. The roundtable sessions are designed to be informal and engaging networking opportunities where we can come together and have open conversations about the industry.   

We’ll also have 45-minute lunch and learns. During these informal and interactive gatherings, you can connect with like-minded individuals and explore concepts related to an industry challenge or technical topic.  

We’re also bringing back hands-on labs with the Developer Lab, the Product Lab and the Innovation Lab, giving you the opportunity to check out the latest Legal Tech innovations.  

Lastly, you can book one-on-one time with an OpenText Legal Tech expert to dive deeper into your specific use case.  

Join us at OpenText World 2022 

The ultimate information management conference is back in-person! Join us from October 4-6 at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas and connect with today’s leading information management experts.  

Looking to join us virtually? Virtual registration is free and features access to keynotes from OpenText CEO & CTO Mark Barrenechea and EVP, Chief Product Officer Muhi Majzoub, access to live guest keynotes and access to book one-on-one time with OpenText experts.  

Register now to save your spot at OpenText World 2022! 

The post Master legal processes at scale – Learn how at OpenText World 2022 appeared first on OpenText Blogs.