If you have never worked with a third-party document review provider, you likely have a lot of questions. How is data transferred? How long does it take? And, perhaps most importantly, will you still have control of the project?

While many businesses are starting to slowly re-open, for most lawyers and law firms it has been “business as usual” with a (home office) twist. By now, you are getting into the groove of virtual meetings, an increasingly paperless practice, and being flexible in the face of the unprecedented personal constraints not only yourself but on your colleagues and clients.

The necessary rapid response to a global pandemic has, at times, pushed organizations to their IT limits while the need for even greater connectivity and scale continues to rise. It's become clearer than ever that easy, secure and flexible cloud access is no longer a nice-to-have but a necessary component to enable remote workers and allow companies to thrive.

Last week, Fernando Garcia, VP Legal and General Counsel for Cargojet, wrote an opinion piece for Canadian Lawyer Magazine. His article, Controlling costs is part of lawyers' mandate, spoke to the duty of in-house and external counsel to keep costs down.

During Legalweek 2020, Judge Andrew Peck was asked about his take on technology in the legal world. In the Q&A interview published by Law.com, the retired federal judge gave his thoughts on eyes-on review, unarchived data and how there is still work to be done in order to integrate technology into the law.

Let me preface this by saying I am not a general technology expert. I went to law school, not MIT. I don’t know how to code, program, design an app or build a website. I contact my IT guy with near-religious regularity.

That said, as a Review Manager at Ricoh eDiscovery, I continually see the benefits of leveraging the latest legal technology to better serve clients. Our document reviews now almost exclusively utilize Relativity Active Learning, which harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics to streamline the review process.

A lot of time and effort goes into legal document review — many times, more than counsel can handle internally. Between budgetary constraints and lack of resources on hand, legal departments and law firms often have to look to alternative options to handle the often time-consuming review of electronic documents potentially relevant to their matter. 

Historically, legal outsourcing has brought some skepticism. As the Director of Legal and Compliance Solutions, I've heard all sorts of reasons why it's "best to keep document reviews in-house or with external counsel". Today I'm sharing why — plain and simple — this is untrue when you work with Ricoh eDiscovery. 

Here are the top five myths I've encountered about outsourced document reviews and their truths. 

In his recent Canadian Lawyer article, Sean Lynch, Director, Legal and Compliance Solutions, presents his case for AI in legal tech. While some Canadian firms have been early adopters of the technology, those who were left behind may be about to catch up. According to Sean, AI is the next step along the technological curve and is being employed in various ways through contract review and analysis, dark data discovery and document review. 

Amazon had been working to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) system that would analyze and rate their applicants’ résumés. However, as reported by Reuters in October, Amazon’s AI discounted the résumés of female applicants in favour of male applicants. Here's what happened...