The Speed of ediscovery: How Disco leaves Relativity in the Dust

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1 SEVENTH SAMURAI WHITEPAPER BY Michael Simon, ediscovery expert consultant The Speed of ediscovery: How Disco leaves Relativity in the Dust

2 SEVENTH SAMURAI ediscovery Expert Consulting 2 The Speed of ediscovery: How Disco leaves Relativity in the Dust By Michael Simon, ediscovery expert consultant Automated ediscovery process still frustrating for lawyers Based on more than 15 years in legal technology and consulting and as a former practicing attorney, the number one frustration with ediscovery that lawyers complain about is speed. How often have you asked yourself why the search and review process with current software is so slow? Why you have to wait hours or even days to get your case data loaded so you can begin work? Why it always seems to take forever to get your documents produced? With the explosion of electronic data involved in searching for evidence, lawyers frequently have to wait several hours or even days for litigation-support staff and outside vendors to process and load collected data. Once the data is processed and ready for review, lawyers are typically forced to use software that is so complex and unresponsive that simple tasks seem to take forever. Too often, searching, tagging, creating assignments, preparing privilege logs, and running productions require large amounts of valuable time or compel lawyers to seek help from third party vendors or other staff members of their firms. The entire automated process of ediscovery becomes cumbersome and expensive for all parties involved. Speed critical to improving the ediscovery experience Recognizing the frustration and barriers to attorney productivity imposed by current legal technologies, the lawyers who developed Disco ediscovery have streamlined the entire process so that all these functions happen instantly. It s a breakthrough innovation for ediscovery that one must experience to genuinely appreciate. This paper helps to demonstrate and contrast how Disco performs when compared with Relativity, one of the popular ediscovery software products used by many firms. For example, loading data into Disco is as simple and easy as sending the data to Disco on a hard drive or by secure FTP. The processing and ingestion process from then on is completely automated and, without rush processing, can be accomplished at speeds of 3 minutes per GB. This includes full analytics, imaging, duplicates and near duplicates, threading, and the like so that there are no delays caused by on-the-fly processing during review. A Relativity customer win story advertises reduced processing times from 48 minutes per GB to 24 minutes per GB. By comparison, Disco can load and process collected data eight times faster than Relativity s advertised speed. Once the data has been loaded into Disco, all the ediscovery tasks that lawyers perform such as search and review literally occur instantly, without delay.

3 SEVENTH SAMURAI ediscovery Expert Consulting 3 Disco more than 14 times faster for searches To assess the speed of ediscovery, we reviewed testing conducted by Disco that compared Disco s ediscovery performance with Relativity software provided by a Relativity Best in Service Orange Partner, the highest certification offered by Relativity. The testing clocked a variety of the most common tasks employed by lawyers looking for evidence using a 55 GB Enron dataset with both solutions. Each task was conducted 10 times at different intervals and measurements averaged to calculate the results shown in Figure 1. The testing of simple tasks such as a phrase search showed Disco more than 14 times faster than Relativity. These differences quickly add up to a major difference in the quality of the search experience for lawyers. Figure 1 Disco vs. Relativity speeds for simple searches (in seconds) FOR SIMPLE SEARCHES, DISCO AVERAGED TIMES FASTER THAN RELATIVITY Relativity Disco Result Search for all documents Disco is 15.45x faster Phrase search for ken lay Disco is 13.05x faster FOR COMPLEX SEARCHES, DISCO AVERAGED 9.97X FASTER THAN RELATIVITY Relativity Disco Result Truncation search for all documents containing words starting with test Disco is 9.40x faster Proximity search for all documents with right within 10 words of contract Disco is 12.97x faster Proximity and truncation combined, searching for all documents with lunch within 40 words of any word starting with shred Disco is 10.2x faster Complex search looking for offshore partnership documents: ( ken lay raptor LJM Fastow (lou /5 pai!) & (type(excel) type(word)) Disco is 7.32x faster

4 SEVENTH SAMURAI ediscovery Expert Consulting 4 Our review of the speed tests also indicated that the absolute value of the results was significant. For example, Relativity searches required multiple seconds, effectively interrupting a lawyer s workflow and forcing the lawyer to pause every time he or she tried to find documents in Relativity. In comparison, Disco s millisecond responses appeared instantaneous to the lawyer user, similar to running searches in Google or Westlaw. The speed advantage displayed by Disco ediscovery, when multiplied across months spent in review, makes a significant difference that contrasts the responsive, pleasant user experience of Disco with a sluggish, interruptive and distracting user experience with Relativity that can frustrate lawyers and ultimately cost clients more money. Disco dramatically faster when reviewing documents Once documents have been found through searches, the speed of viewing and navigating through these documents in the review process also plays a critical role in the ediscovery experience. The chart in Figure 2 illustrates speed differences between Disco and Relativity when performing typical review tasks such as opening a document and navigating to the next document. Disco opens a document from search results 6 times faster than Relativity and is a blazing 200 times faster than Relativity when closing the viewer and returning to search results. Figure 2 Disco vs. Relativity Speeds for Review Tasks (in seconds) Relativity Disco Result Opening a document from search results Disco is 6.07x faster Navigating to the next document from the document viewer Disco is 3.28x faster Closing the viewer to return to search results Disco is 195.5x faster

5 SEVENTH SAMURAI ediscovery Expert Consulting 5 Thus, in a direct comparison of speed testing, Disco search and review blows away the popular competition, leaving Relativity in the dust. For lawyers, Disco makes the difference between waiting between every search and every document and having the evidence instantly available at your fingertips. In terms of practice, Disco performs more like Westlaw, giving control back to lawyers and enabling them find evidence much faster themselves. Reinventing ediscovery from the ground up We spoke directly with Disco to find out more about how its ediscovery software as a service can deliver 1/3 second search and 1/10 second document navigation for even the largest multi-tb datasets. We found several reasons why Disco is able to achieve the incredible speeds demonstrated in our testing results. Disco uses newer, next generation database solutions such as no-sql database technology. This new technology was designed for big data management and powers the world s leading search engine providers. Other ediscovery platforms still rely on legacy search engines and SQL databases. Disco has built a highly centralized, efficient computing infrastructure to assure the performance and security of its software as a service model. Data is stored and processed at Disco data centers incorporating the newest high-performance servers and latest security measures. These servers are able to perform much faster and more efficiently than in house computing systems at law firms, which can vary widely in performance capabilities depending on when they were installed and how they are maintained. Unlike other ediscovery offerings, Disco has fully integrated processing, search, review and production for instantaneous results. Everything works together across three easy-to-use screens. There s one screen for search, one for review and one for production with no need for technical training by users. Any lawyer can use Disco within a matter of minutes. Other software products are often stitched together using offerings from separate technology vendors that don t work together as a single cohesive solution. Disco is amazing! Every ediscovery product I previously used was a nightmare. - SHIVA HAMIDINIA, BRIGLIA MCLAUGHLIN PLLC The Disco ediscovery experience online Finding critical evidence with the typical search and review software platform remains a frustrating experience for most lawyers. Disco ediscovery was built by lawyers for lawyers, born out of their own struggles with trying to accomplish more in less time. With Disco, lawyers can find critical evidence using familiar Westlaw and Lexis style search syntax learned in law school. So you can focus on finding what you need to win your case, not on learning a complicated new search language or spending extra hours on technical training. While the results of our speed testing of Disco versus Relativity demonstrate the clear superiority of the Disco solution, there is no substitute for experiencing Disco yourself. We encourage you to visit the Disco website at and take the free selfguided demo. You ll be able to view a recorded

6 SEVENTH SAMURAI ediscovery Expert Consulting 6 demonstration and also get the option at any time to actually use Disco directly online. This is the actual solution on production servers featuring a public 55 GB Enron dataset that allows you to experience for yourself the advantages of Disco s ediscovery speed and ease of use. Faster. Easier. More affordable. Disco is the next generation in ediscovery. ABOUT US Michael Simon is a co-founder of Seventh Samurai, ediscovery experts representing seasoned professionals who have worked in corporate environments and now serve clients as independent consultants. He is an author and frequent contributor to legal publications focusing on the evolution of ediscovery from both technical and attorney perspectives. He can be contacted at COPYRIGHT MICHAEL SIMON 2014 RELATIVITY AND KCURA ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF KCURA CORPORATION