Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/13683
Legacy approaches and solutions for managing content have become insufficient for today’s data volumes, user expectations and global workforces. Law firms need technologies that users will readily adopt in order to encourage compliance with important information policies. The policies necessary to protect the firm and mitigate risk must also be easy to adopt. New technology has emerged that enables law firms and legal departments to take advantage of better matter and case management by understanding the meaning of electronically stored information (ESI). This unique and holistic view of matters helps firms and organizations become smarter as more information is processed to better leverage case and matter content. A PLATFORM OF MEANING At the heart of many information management challenges is the need for deeper analytics and advanced knowledge management. This has led to the innovation of “meaning-based” systems. Meaning-based solutions refer to those with the ability to form an understanding of all electronic information, whether structured, semi-structured or unstructured, and recognize the relationships that exist within that information. For example, an attorney searching for “Prozac” can find references to Prozac, anti-depressants, Eli Lily, Zoloft and other SSRI medications. With a conceptual and contextual understanding of all electronic information, meaning- based technology enables computers to process information like humans do by reading, watching and listening to it. Meaning-based technology extracts the meaning of all the information used throughout the enterprise. With this understanding, these platforms can speed the processing of electronic information — automating many manual processes in real time — to offer true business value. Meaning- based platforms are fundamentally different from traditional content management systems, eliminating the need to transfer data between applications, mitigating the chain of custody and spoliation risks, and reducing the costs associated with legacy methods. These platforms provide an advanced system to support all of the information management and governance needs of any organization, enabling a seamless experience across the entire matter lifecycle. Let’s take a look at how a meaning- based platform increases the transparency of information and offers further automation throughout the matter lifecycle: MATTER INTAKE Central to the matter intake process is the vetting of potential business for conflicts of interest with existing matters. Traditionally, conflicts- checking is a manual process that involves querying a structured database of clients, matters and parties to the matters. Conflicts analysts laboriously research the new piece of business and develop complex queries to run against the conflicts database for the purpose of generating a report that can be reviewed by the firm prior to accepting the new business. With the advent of meaning-based technologies, the conflicts of interest process is transformed by automatically identifying references to parties in a legal matter. A meaning-based system can infer that Steve Jobs www.iltanet.org Case/Matter Management 7