On August 29, 2023, Reveal announced it had acquired both Logikcull and IPRO, two other leading eDiscovery players.
With those acquisitions, Reveal offers the first platform to cover the full breadth of the EDRM diagram for matters and legal teams of all sizes.
This is a big deal for everyone engaged in eDiscovery. It is a big deal for a host of reasons, including these three intertwined ones: Reveal now covers the full range of the EDRM, from Information Governance through Presentation; Reveal now offers capabilities useful for matters of all sizes and complexity; and, especially important for corporations, Reveal provides one place for all those capabilities.
Covering the Full Range of the EDRM
Since at least the 1990s, there have been two opposing approaches to what technology to use when taking on eDiscovery. In one camp have been those who contend that a mix-and-match, best-of-breed approach works best. In the other camp have been those who advocate for an all-in-one platform. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but the debate has been and continues to be real.
In earlier days, I was part of the first group. I used one tool to preserve data, another for processing, a third to host data for and facilitate review, various other tools for more advanced analytical capabilities, and yet other tools when we presented data at depositions, hearings, and trials. I would have preferred to use a single platform, but no one platform offered a robust enough set of capabilities covering that entire spectrum.
Today, with its most recent acquisitions, Reveal has expanded the scope of its offerings to the point where they cover that full spectrum – the full range of the stages shown in the EDRM diagram.
Here is how Reveal got there.
When Reveal entered the legal technology market in 2011 with version 1.0 of its platform, the primary areas of focus were the Review and Production stages of the EDRM diagram. The platform offered Processing and Analytics, but with functions that were rudimentary compared with what was to come.
With its 2019 acquisition of Mindseye Solutions and their industry-leading processing technology, Reveal greatly enhanced its ability to process data.
The next big leap for Reveal – and it was a big one – came with the 2020 acquisition of NexLP, rebranded as Reveal AI; the 2021 acquisition of Brainspace; and the 2022 launch of Reveal 11. That release, which combined the best of Brainspace, Reveal AI, and Reveal Review, delivered the industry’s first fully integrated AI-powered platform.
In 2022 Reveal acquired Technically Creative, followed by LIGL in 2023. Those acquisitions added comprehensive legal hold capabilities, the ability to deploy robust data connectors as well as in-place data preservation, and workflow automation.
With its recent acquisition of IPRO, Reveal now offers a set of tools that span the entire EDRM diagram. At the left end of the EDRM diagram, the Information Governance solutions from IPRO, greatly enhanced by IPRO’s 2020 acquisition of NetGovern, provide organizations with a comprehensive platform to manage large volumes of data and comply with relevant regulations. At the Presentation stage, situated at the right end of the diagram, the category-defining Trial Director, acquired by IPRO in 2017, enables users to take their data to the courtroom and present it dynamically to judges and juries.
One Place for All Matters Large and Small
The offerings available in the eDiscovery software market have long forced folks in law firms, legal departments, and service providers who want to rely primarily on one platform to make an inherently unsatisfactory Hobson’s choice. Either they have had to opt for a platform designed for large matters, or they have had to choose one built for small cases and projects.
I walked in those shoes for many years. As an associate and then partner at two law firms, one with upwards of 200 lawyers and the other with 30+ attorneys, I handled a typical range of matters. Many of the cases I worked on, especially in my earlier years, were small to medium in size. They involved simple contract disputes, routine employment issues, run-of-the-mill personal injury claims. There were only a few witnesses who ever would matter, and relatively few documents that needed to be gathered, reviewed, and potentially used at depositions, hearings, or trials. A subset of the cases, or sets of cases, were quite large. The plaintiff’s damage demand in one matter peaked at $2 billion, dropping to “just” $200 million after their key damages expert withdrew. A set of cases I worked on for years would have, had we lost, likely have driven our client, a major corporation, out of business.
At both those firms, I also bore the responsibility to select, implement, and support legal technology. When it came to tools for eDiscovery, I could elect to spend firm or client money on tools that worked well for small matters, tools that offered simplicity and ease of use – especially for occasional users. Or I could dedicate those dollars to tools better suited to large matters, tools with the power and scale needed to meet the demands of those matters but overbearing for smaller matters.
After leaving the second law firm, I worked for more than 1 ½ decades as testifying expert witness and consultant to corporate legal departments, law firms, and eDiscovery service and software providers. For six of those years, a colleague and I conducted the leading survey of the eDiscovery market. What I learned from those experiences affirmed for me that the mix of matters I worked on was, indeed, typical for other law firms. It also taught me that those in corporate legal departments usually faced an even more disparate mix, with many smaller matters and only a few large ones.
With Reveal’s acquisition of Logikcull, you now can go to a single source to solve both problems, spanning the spectrum of matters that can be handled from small-scale projects to the most complex and high-stakes lawsuits and investigations.
A Single Throat to Choke for Procurement
A long-standing challenge for buyers of eDiscovery tools has been the “one throat to choke” problem, something I encountered most commonly when consulting with corporations.
One company’s experience was emblematic. The company had convened an internal team to tackle the problem of what combination of eDiscovery software tools would best meet its needs. Over an 18-month period, representatives of key stakeholders including information governance, information security, eDiscovery, business units, and more convened regularly to determine their needs, assess the available software options, and develop a recommendation. Having concluded that there was no single software provider whose offerings adequately meet the needs they had identified, the team selected a carefully calibrated set of tools from several companies. Only then did procurement weight in, nixing that decision. Procurement mandated that there be only one contract, and that it be with only one company. The company did find a software provider that, on paper, met its needs, one that had been previously considered and rejected; selected that organization; and to this day rues that choice.
Were that company making its decision today, and with the IG-Presentation range of capabilities that Reveal now offers, that company now would have a viable one-company, one-contract option.
Learn More
To learn more about how from self-service offerings for smaller cases to enterprise-grade, AI-driven technology for complex legal challenges, Reveal is uniquely positioned to meet the diverse needs of the legal industry and propel legal professionals to new levels of efficiency and success and ultimately help you, contact us.