eDiscovery in SA – How can the new Legal Data Intelligence initiative affect South Africa?

First of all, what is the new Legal Data Intelligence (LDI) initiative? Well, a starting point is their website – https://legaldataintelligence.org/ ?– but in summary, a group of highly regarded and knowledgeable people have been working for 18 months to put this together and it was launched at the recent Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) gathering. We were fortunate enough to have a preview of the initiative, as Relativity Partners because Relativity has had huge input into this, and now there is much being written. As is often the case, I recommend you to one of the first blogs on the subject by my good friend Doug Austin, who explains it admirably.

?LDI has already been hailed globally as “exciting”, “game changing” and “very interesting”. Its goal is that by sharing experiences and knowledge, industry practitioners can expand their role and add value to their organisations, and its clients where applicable. Relativity supported the initiative with people and website creation and now its involvement is to use its software applications to amplify LDI across our industry. It is worth looking at the aims and principles of LDI, and the object is to “empower the legal industry with a vocabulary, framework and best practices to manage legal data and ultimately accelerate the dispensation of legal advice”. The 5 core principles are:-

1.??? Tackle the underlying data challenge – volume of data, and increasing complexity affects every area and type of legal work.

2.??? Separate SUN from ROT – Sensitive, Useful and Necessary data as distinct from Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial (N.B. I can see how Relativity with its analytics and AI can help here)

3.??? Break down Silos – a long standing issue in law firms and corporations.

4.??? Refocus your energy – LDI will allow legal professionals to overcome data challenges and devote more time to serving clients and provide greater value.

5.??? Hone your skill set – Combining legal skills with technology, operational excellence and a strong data orientation – a “crossroads of capabilities that represents the future of the legal profession.

Powerful stuff, and so let us take a brief look at how it can help specific areas of legal work. Currently, the model covers use cases under four umbrellas:

Disputes and Investigations: Litigation, Regulatory Requests, Third-party Subpoenas, Internal Investigations

Corporate: Contract Reviews, Contract Lifecycle Management,

Data Protection Compliance: FOIA Requests, DSARs, Data Breach Response, Personal Data Identification and Anonymization

Business of Law: Invoice Review, Operational Efficiency

Obviously my main interest is litigation and looking at the level of detail just on this topic is amazing – see the link on LDI’s site. It describes each step under the headings Initiate, Investigate and Implement, and it does so on each of the 12 use cases mentioned, to arrive at best practices.

LDI also suggests job creation for organisations with e.g Head of LDI and LDI Analyst with suggested job descriptions for each on the website.

For me, even with such little knowledge thus far, I see LDI being as potentially important as, for example, EDRM and I see these as totally complementary with each other. Remember that it goes way beyond eDiscovery and into most practice legal business areas.

There is a lot to take in, I know, but I strongly recommend reading what is available now and see how it can help your role or your organisation. Here in SA , we have a growing number of talented in-house teams in law firms and corporations as well as LPO’s and BPO’s. This initiative clearly touches every type of organisation and department and I believe it could help to transform so much of what we all do.

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