Since Google announced the launch of its social media platform Google+ only weeks ago, the internet has been abuzz with discussion of whether the search giant can overtake Facebook as the web’s most popular social hangout. Early July has also seen a major development in the realm of legal technology, which will surely receive less (much less, in fact) media attention. Legal research services company LexisNexis has announced the launch of its new e-discovery program for large projects, dubbed Confordance Evolution 1.0.
Evolution, which is based on Microsoft server databases, updates LexisNexis’ Concordance Classic e-discovery programs by including features like concept searching and clustering, and providing search alerts, reports Law Technology News. It also adds to features already present in some form in the older Classic versions, like e-mail threading and auditing. “People really want to do very different things,” said LexisNexis vice president of litigation tools Deborah Jillson. “We build a basic application…Everybody wants to review documents and get to relevancy, but they also want to do other things.”
Jillson added that the Evolution program will undergo additional changes in the coming years, as the company works out the kinks usually present with first editions. What’s certain is that LexisNexis Evolution will have a serious impact on the world of e-discovery for law firms that don’ have time to spend on technology training. Most lawyers didn’t have computer training in law school or in their early career, said e-discovery expert Diane Barry in an interview about ethics and e-discovery. “Many legal practicioners were not interested in technology and aren’t now,” she said. “But you must either have minimal competency or associate with someone who does.”
For lawyers and law firms without the technological competency to master e-discovery, LexisNexis Evolution could become one of the central resources for pre-trial data collection. And although it may not shake the web to the extent of the Google+ vs. Facebook war, it will no doubt have an impact.
Photo credit: Rutger de Moddertukker
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