The knowledge and content management magazine KM World labeled Relativity, a eDiscovery platform developed by kCura, a trend-setting product of 2012. But kCura Relativity is more than a trend. This software has become a game-changer and labeling it as a trend elicits an impermanence that undermines the credit this product deserves. Like the Ford Model T or the Internet, kCura Relativity is establishing a precedent for the new era of eDiscovery.
Even though this product has over 60,000 users including the U.S. Department of Justice and 95 of the top 100 law firms in the U.S., according to KM World, kCura Relativity still remains relatively unknown. Relativity is a web-enabled discovery software aiding in the processing, review, analysis, and production of electronic documents. 
This is a revolutionary application that manages terabytes of data while simultaneously allowing users to customize a database for their needs. Specifically, this application allows an unprecedented efficiency with control in the hands of the user.
Joseph Cusumano, a litigation support manager at Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman, says the upgrades moved more of kCura’s powerful features into litigation supports control. "'We can quickly reallocate optical character recognition, production, and TIFFing without having to involve our IT administrators. That’s really what raised my eyebrows,'" he says in the article. With Kcura Relativity devoting itself to continuous evolution offering a groundbreaking product that stands on its own, it’s clear to see while certainly being trendsetting is complimentary, it just doesn’t do it justice.
TERIS is a premiere partner of kCura with certifications in every Relativity module kCura offers. In fact, the same company that was responsible for developing the IT model for kCura Relativity designed the Relativity infrastructure for TERIS. The combination of TERIS’ “Best in Service” reputation, along with the powerful benefits of kCura Relativity platform, provide clients with better processing capabilities and more flexible workflow capabilities making the platform stronger, faster, and even more powerful.
Richard Saldivar, President Arizona/Texas, recently announced that Marquis R. McElvine joined the Phoenix office as Senior Litigation Technology Engineer.
According to Mr. Saldivar, "TERIS’ core belief is to hire employees with exceptional industry experience so clients will experience individualized best-in-class customized solutions that allow them to pay for only what they need. We strive to be an integral part of our client’s firm and to act as their right arm. Our newest hire, Marquis holds advanced experience in managing and working with eDiscovery matters. His knowledge and expertise related to search technology, document preservation, technology vendor relationships, legal consulting, record management, governmental and regulatory agencies, and historic media analysis is noteworthy."
Marquis is proficient at using Nuix for processing and searching before loading results into Relativity and is a proven expert in computer literature, SQL, C++, Nuix, EnCase, FTK, Attenex, Viewpoint, Clearwell, eCapture/IPRO, iCONECT, Summation, and Concordance. He held positions of increasing responsibility at companies including eLitigation Solutions where he managed a team which provided application training, support, and demonstrations for internal and external clients; Forensics Consulting Solutions, where he served as the Operations Manager; Renew Data, forensic/data hosting; and RLS Legal Solutions of which Mr. Saldivar was the President for ten years.
“Richard Saldivar has a reputation for honesty, determination and authenticity. I witnessed first hand how he grew RLS Legal Solutions to become an industry leader and how he develops excellence in employees to provide remarkable value and service to clients. I am privileged to learn, grow and be a part of the TERIS Phoenix team,” states Marquis.
Marquis achieved a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering with a Minor in Mathematics from Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina.
TERIS has seven regional locations throughout the United States. Founded in 1996, TERIS provides eDiscovery, Information Governance, Relativity and Computer Forensics solutions to corporate legal teams and law firms across the U.S. and internationally. TERIS’ staff of almost 300 was named one of the top 20 eDiscovery service providers in 2008 by industry researcher Socha-Gelbmann.
In a continuing effort to remain on top of the cutting edge of technology Shawn Sieck, Executive Vice President, Business Development and eDiscovery Consulting, Sharon Brown, Project Manager, Jake Render, Director of Hosting and Database Services and Annie Chung, Litigation Technology Department Manager TERIS recently returned from the third-annual Relativity Fest 2012 in Chicago. The event featured special speakers and hands-on labs and networking all designed to provide Relativity education in a fast-paced, fun environment.
In 2011 kCura welcomed TERIS into the very elite group of partners who have achieved “Best in Service” status. Established in 2010, the Best in Service program recognizes Relativity partners who do an exemplary job of maintaining a commitment to delivering a great customer experience with Relativity. Partners are evaluated on technical capabilities, volume of data and cases under management, and the strength of their client references.
According to Andrew Sieja, President and CEO of kCura, “It is important to us that Relativity users have a positive experience with the software. The Best in Service program allows us to recognize our partners who provide high-quality support, infrastructure, and product expertise to their customers, and we’re proud to identify TERIS as one of these exceptional partners.”
Shawn Sieck brings more than 10 years of legal technology experience to his role as Executive Vice President, Business Development and eDiscovery Consulting for TERIS. He became a Partner in 2008. Sieck is considered one of the best and most knowledgeable eDiscovery experts in the Litigation Support Services industry. He has created leading-edge solution sets for information governance & eDiscovery for AMLAW 100 and Fortune 500 Companies alike. These have been customized for specific needs and provide clients with repeatable best practices process.
Since 2010, Sharon Brown has been an integral part of the TERIS team. As a Project Manager, she encounters clients who run the gamut – from novices in eDiscovery practices to more sophisticated litigators. In keeping with the TERIS approach, she applies her vast range of experience to deliver at the highest level for each client. She is responsive to their unique needs, whether that’s providing education, meeting tight deadlines, or assisting with options to achieve their criteria.
According to Sharon, “I spent two-and-one-half days broadening my Relativity knowledge, meeting with other users and experts and brought back new tips and insight that will help TERIS continue to provide the best solutions for our clients."
Jake Render brings over six years of experience to his role as TERIS’ Director of Hosting and Database Services. He has taken TERIS’ Hosting department from supporting one client with 100 GB of data in FYI/Concordance to supporting over 200 clients and over 25 TB of data across four hosting platforms. In addition, Jake developed TERIS’ Best Practices and Standardized Procedures for Hosting Data.
In her eight years in the industry, Annie Chung, Litigation Technology Department Manager has managed all aspects of the litigation support lifecycle, including case assessment, data collections, imaging, processing, hosting, reviews and productions. In addition, Annie has acquired invaluable experience developing technical manuals, leading training sessions for document review teams, determining short and long-term strategies as well as best practices in assisting both corporate and legal clients. Annie has helped TERIS develop strong partnerships with top corporations and firms since 2009. She has served as a Chair and Commissioner for the City of Berkeley.
According to Annie, "Attending Relativity Fest 2012 was a great opportunity to build upon my technical knowledge as a Relativity Certified Administrator, listen to the pain points currently faced by top law firms and understand how the platform can be leveraged to assist them with navigating the challenges inherent in this industry - challenges that are a result of changes in data scope and sizes, production specifications and deadlines. The panels and breakout lab sessions increased my knowledge of how TERIS, as a Relativity Best in Service Partner, can assist clients with maximizing the flexibility of the platform to overcome such challenges and in doing so, help them significantly reduce the costs associated with document review and productions."
Special Blog Post By Peter vR Sternkopf, TERIS CTO
In the very early days of eDiscovery, the market was defined by several independent software providers, utilized for the most part directly by law firms. As the technology and market have changed, several of these smaller providers have either vanished or been consolidated into larger companies. The challenges of remaining sustainable include the variation in clientele (service providers, corporations, and law firms) as well as the rapidly changing industry demands. Despite thes
e challenges, and out of over 200 software applications, there are several notable software providers currently dominating the eDiscovery market.
Platform Solutions
Exterro Fusion
Exterro’s integrated, all-in-one e-discovery platform, Exterro Fusion, enables legal and IT teams to manage the most daunting complexities and challenges often encountered in the convergence of eDiscovery and information governance. Historically the main competition for PSS Atlas (IBM), Exterro similarly provides management tools for discovery workflow as well as legal holds. With the addition of further capabilities in modular format, Exterro offers a more comprehensive solution than point-based software.
Autonomy IDOL Server
This branch of HP, focused specifically on the eDiscovery market, is considered one of the primary providers within the industry for enterprise clientele.
Viewpoint (by Lateral Data a Xerox company)
Viewpoint software is an all-in-one e-Discovery platform that covers the core components of the electronic discovery lifecycle, including Collection, Early Case Assessment, Processing, Analysis, Review and Production.
ESI Processing
Nuix
Nuix's eDiscovery software specializes in Early Case Assessment (ECA) with focus on extremely fast metadata/text extraction and indexing, analysis toolset, first-pass review, production and export. Their powerful technology is geared toward normalizing an organization’s unstructured data stores, making them instantly searchable and more manageable.
eCapture (by IPRO)
eCapture can handle virtually any electronic file type and email store, and offers powerful searching, de-duping, filtering and compound document handling; designed to handle large eDiscovery projects with speed and scalability utilizing a distributed, multi-threaded and centralized management system.
Venio FPR
Venio FPR provides a single source for data culling, processing, ECA analytics, review, and production.
AccessData ECA
AD ECA is a stand-alone processing, culling and filtering solution. It focuses on the processing and first-pass review stages of the e-discovery life cycle and comes in both software and appliance formats.
Cloud Discovery
X1 Social Discovery
X1 Social Discovery is designed to effectively address social media content from the leading social media networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In addition, it can crawl, capture and instantly search content from any website. Unlike archiving and image capture solutions, X1 Social Discovery provides for a matter-centric workflow from search and collection through production in searchable native format, while preserving critical metadata not possible through image capture, printouts, or raw data archival of RSS feeds.
NextPoint
The Cloud Preservation service automatically crawls your web properties at chosen intervals, building an archive of html source code and resources, high quality snapshots, and a robust full-text search index. The service makes it a breeze to go back in time with all of your websites, blogs, Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages to search content, preview the site, and export data.
Audio Discovery
Nexidia
Nexidia makes audio recordings easily reviewable and replaces the costly process of manual transcription and human listening with an efficient alternative. Nexidia's patented technology quickly indexes large volumes of recorded audio using phoneme patterns - providing higher accuracy than dictionary-dependent, speech-to-text based audio search. Advanced query technology and metadata integration allows reviewers to drill directly into the audio content.
Content Analysis
Equivio
Specifically geared toward providing technology-assisted review, this company shows promise in the predictive coding market and may expand this base in the future.
Content Analyst Analytical Technology (CAAT)
The CAAT platform is a dynamic suite of technologies known as Text Analytics. It provides organization tools for classification and email analysis; concept search; and other text analytics capabilities that automate most of the human activity traditionally associated with using unstructured data.
ESI Archiving/Management
Enterprise Vault (by Symantec)
An enterprise communication and ESI archiving system that connects to Exchange, Domino/Lotus, SharePoint, file shares, PST/NSF archives, Database/ERP systems, IM systems and Blackberry SMS/PIN. Enterprise Vault enables users to store, manage, and discover unstructured information across the organization.
StoredIQ Information Intelligence Platform
The technology can discover, index, tag, classify, and act on unstructured and semi-structured data from a variety of different sources including file servers, email, archives, document management systems, and tape. Early case assessment can be performed prior to collection.
Data Indexing
Lucene (Apache)
While suitable for any application that requires full text indexing and searching capability, Lucene has been widely recognized for its utility in the implementation of Internet search engines and local, single-site searching; and especially well-suited for eDiscovery software implementations.
dtSearch
The dtSearch Engine lets developers quickly add dtSearch’s proven “industrial-strength” searching, and file format and other data support, to applications.
Review Hosting
Relativity (by kCura)
As a feature-rich review platform, Relativity provides image and native file review, diverse coding options, flexible workflow capabilities, integrated productions, foreign language support, text analytics, and visual data analysis.
Xera (by iCONECT)
XERA is a review platform designed with advanced Web technologies focused on the review, analysis, and production of electronically stored information (ESI). With the release of XERA, iCONECT delivers a new standard in legal review applications for law firms and corporations that expect to interact with technology in an intuitive and efficient manner.
Clearwell (a Symantec Company)
Purchased by Symantec last year, the Clearwell E-Discovery Platform was purpose-built for eDiscovery and was one of the first companies in this market to offer very niche-specific software.
Honorable Mentions
There are also several up-and-comers who are turning their focus more intently toward eDiscovery, and may soon give the top contenders a run for their money. These include:
Microsoft: Already the major software leader for just about every other use, Microsoft continues to add more eDiscovery functionality into its products, such as SharePoint and Exchange. While it’s unclear whether a firm entrance into the discovery market is in mind, the company seems poised and ready to enter that market at will.
Google: With the advent of Google Vault, a program which offers archival and discovery functionality for Google Apps users, it’s very possible that more specific discovery software may be released in the future. Google is also extremely budget-friendly, with Google Vault running at a cost of just $50/year/per user.
IBM: Providing a range of product functionality, IBM (and its acquired PSS Atlas) offers just about everything from evidence collection and assessment to legal hold issuances. There is a primary focus on defensibility, reducing legal vulnerability and discovery costs simultaneously.
In addition, there is of course a multitude of vendors and service providers who use their own proprietary software. As the growing trend of eDiscovery continues, the list of industry leaders will only become even more impressive.
For more information and comparison tools, visit The eDJ Tech Matrix
Ediscovery has become a necessity within the legal profession rather than an occasional novelty. The powerful capabilities of electronic discovery are very impressive, and can benefit your company even more so by focusing on several key qualities.
1. Powerful Search Function
Any electronic discovery tool must be able to collect all the data you could need as evidence, and also have comprehensive search capabilities. This includes searching not only active files but archived data as well, and by multiple factors: concepts as well as words or phrases. Results should be delivered quickly and in an easily understandable format.
2. Organization
Searching data isn’t enough; you also need a system for keeping all that gathered information organized and easily accessible. Make sure your ediscovery tool is capable of indexing files and documents, or create a dedicated database from scratch. File conversion capability is a necessary part of this process.
3. Capability
Your platform must be able to handle large amounts of data. Very often in data mining, one gem uncovered leads to entirely new trails. A low-capacity system will quickly become irrelevant and frustrating.
4. Economy
The electronic discovery service provider you choose should also be an economical choice. The stronger your return on investment, the less money is tied up in the discovery process which may be better allocated elsewhere.
5. Usability
The more user-friendly a program is, the more positively it will impact your ROI. Although you want a comprehensive search and analysis potential, you also want it quickly and with a minimum of specialized training.
6. Sophistication
Usability should not, however, come at the cost of functionality. Your ediscovery has to be able to manage complex projects efficiently, including data from a variety of sources: spreadsheets and documents as well as emails.
7. Compatibility
Any electronic discovery software used must be compatible with other software your legal team may already be using, so data conversion capability is a must. Data should be able to be converted into other formats easily, including images or text.
8. Integration
Compatibility of your discovery software is essential not only with other litigation software you may be using but also with your legal team. Any program used has to be in alignment with the requirements of you and your staff. This includes data format, general manageability, and other user-end qualities which are necessary to you.
9. Preservation of Data Integrity
If the integrity of your data is called into question, all electronic discovery efforts will be wasted effort. Your ediscovery tool must ensure total preservation of all original data.
The Big Picture
Although naming specifics is easy, it’s important to remember to look at the big picture as well. A good ediscovery tool will enhance defensibility, accelerate case assessment and contribute to a significant reduction in review workload. Investigations should be completed more quickly, and data must be collected and searchable, without its integrity being called into question. These qualities, plus compatibility with your existing team and methods, are what ultimately define the ideal ediscovery tool.
TERIS, a leading provider of eDiscovery, data hosting and related legal support solutions to corporate legal teams and law firms, today announced that kCura, developers of the e-discovery platform Relativity, has welcomed TERIS into the very elite group of partners who have achieved “Best in Service” status.
Established in 2010, the Best in Service program recognizes Relativity partners who do an exemplary job of maintaining a commitment to delivering a great customer experience with Relativity. Partners were evaluated on technical capabilities, volume of data and cases under management, and the strength of their client references.
"We are extremely honored that kCura has recognized TERIS as a Best in Service partner,” said Kip Hauser, TERIS Chief Operating Officer. "Our goal is for each of our clients to have an exceptional experience and come away with an increased knowledge of the eDiscovery process after working with TERIS. We've invested heavily in our technology, as well as our employee training, to make sure our staff is highly knowledgeable with all aspects of Relativity, creating a premier hosting and review experience for our valued clients. We appreciate and look forward to our ongoing partnership with kCura."
“It is important to us that Relativity users have a positive experience with the software,” said Andrew Sieja, president and CEO of kCura. “The Best in Service program allows us to recognize our partners who provide high-quality support, infrastructure, and product expertise to their customers, and we’re proud to identify TERIS as one of these exceptional partners.”
About kCura - Recognized as a “Leader” in Gartner’s 2011 E-Discovery Magic Quadrant, kCura are the developers of the e-discovery software Relativity, a web-based platform for the review, analysis, and production of electronic data. Relativity has more than 52,000 active users worldwide from organizations including the U.S. Department of Justice and 95 of the top 100 law firms in the United States. Relativity also powers Method, kCura’s workflow and notification system for managing legal hold and risk assessment processes. kCura helps corporations, law firms, and government agencies meet e-discovery challenges by installing Relativity and Method on-premises and providing hosted, on-demand solutions through a global network of partners. kCura has been ranked the 42nd fastest-growing technology company in North America on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 and named one of Chicago’s Top Workplaces by the Chicago Tribune. Please contact kCura at info@kcura.com or visit www.kcura.com for more information.
About TERIS
Founded in 1996, TERIS is one of the nation's leading litigation support firms, providing sophisticated eDiscovery and related legal support solutions to corporate legal teams and law firms across the U.S. and internationally. The company has offices in Seattle, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, San Diego, Phoenix, Austin, Dallas, Houston, and Chicago. To learn more about TERIS, visit TERIS.com or follow the company on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/DiscoverTERIS for Facebook at www.Facebook.com/DiscoverTERIS.
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