Across the e-discovery industry, legal teams are under increasing pressure to deliver high-quality results with fewer resources and tighter timelines and use generative AI technology to do so. Clients expect reliable, rapid, and transparent output, and project managers are constantly seeking ways to balance accuracy, speed, and cost all in one.
Relativity aiR—and especially aiR for Review and aiR for Privilege—has become a game-changer in achieving that balance. By combining the efficiency of AI with the oversight of experienced practitioners, these solutions enable teams to accelerate first-pass responsiveness and privilege review while maintaining the defensibility that clients and courts require. When used together, they create a powerful, flexible workflow that helps organizations meet production goals faster and with greater consistency.
This is how I’ve learned to approach using aiR for Review and aiR for Privilege in tandem, securing client confidence with real results, ensuring expert engagement at the right moments, and integrating human judgment into every stage of AI-powered review.
Building Confidence and Securing Buy-In
Before any project begins, my first step is to assess whether aiR is a strong fit for the data and the client’s goals. I take a two-pronged approach: understanding the data itself and then engaging the client in thoughtful collaboration.
On the data side, success begins with preparation. aiR works best when documents contain reliable, extractable text—so ensuring that OCR quality is solid and file sizes are within thresholds is key. Rather than presenting these factors as limitations, I frame them as part of setting up the data set for success; however it is important to note that if a particular case contains too many documents that would require human review as a part of the process, it is okay to leverage other tools at your disposal. It is essential to optimize the technology to perform at its highest level, as well as come to the table with a recommendation on the best tools and workflows to use for the specific project at hand.
The collaboration side is equally important. I meet with clients to clarify the purpose of the review and help determine which combination of aiR solutions best fits their needs. Some of the questions I ask include:
- Is the main purpose of the review to meet production obligations?
- Is the client focused on identifying key documents quickly for trial preparation?
- Are the documents “privilege heavy” and do they require a detailed privilege analysis?
These conversations not only help shape the technical setup, but they also build trust. For many clients, aiR represents their first experience using generative AI outside of editing emails or providing internet search results. The more we can answer questions and walk through concrete examples—such as what the workflow looks like, what types of results they can expect, and how prompt iteration works—the more confident they become.
If collaborative discussion doesn’t win them over, the numbers usually do. Demonstrating the potential time and cost savings of aiR often resonates with clients facing limited budgets or compressed schedules. For some, cost is secondary to speed; for others, risk reduction is the key motivator. In all cases, aiR’s ability to deliver both efficiency and control makes it a compelling option.
Since adopting aiR, we’ve seen aiR for Review, aiR for Privilege, and combined workflows deliver anywhere from 20 to 80 percent in overall cost savings, depending on the goals and structure of the review, which significantly outperforms traditional linear human review. I provide clients with side-by-side budgets for human review and aiR so they can clearly compare the options and make an informed decision.
When I highlight how those efficiencies multiply when aiR for Review and aiR for Privilege are used together, adoption becomes an easy decision. Clients quickly see how the tools complement each other: one identifying what must be produced, the other protecting what must not. That dual impact creates confidence not only in the technology but also in the process as a whole.
The Role of Subject Matter Experts
While aiR streamlines the review process, it doesn’t replace the need for human expertise. Every successful project depends on a knowledgeable subject matter expert (SME) who collaborates closely with those running the aiR project.
Early on, I make sure clients understand that some upfront time investment is necessary. aiR isn’t a “set it and forget it” tool; it’s a sophisticated partner that performs best when guided by informed human input. The SME helps draft and refine prompts, validates sample results, and makes nuanced decisions that reflect the specifics of the matter.
For aiR for Review, the SME ensures that prompt instructions capture the substance of responsiveness—defining what is relevant, what is not, and where the gray areas lie. They also validate early outputs, much like a review lead would calibrate a team at the start of a first-pass review.
For aiR for Privilege, the SME’s role is equally vital. They oversee annotations and ensure privilege categories are aligned with the client’s standards and counsel’s expectations. They also provide perspective on whether to accept or apply edits to aiR for Privilege’s auto-generated privilege log descriptions. While our team provides guidance on workflows and oversees project progress, we greatly value the SME insight that fine-tunes the results.
This collaboration creates a wonderful “working relationship” between human and AI: aiR accelerates analysis, while the SME provides the legal and contextual intelligence that keeps the project accurate, defensible, and aligned with the client’s goals.
Designing Flexible, Integrated Workflows
No two reviews are exactly alike. The power of combining aiR for Review and aiR for Privilege lies in their flexibility. Each project’s workflow can be tailored based on the data, the production strategy, and the team’s objectives.
In many cases, the most efficient approach is to run aiR for Review first. This allows the team to eliminate non-responsive material before starting privilege review, reducing both volume and cost. The streamlined data set means fewer documents need to be evaluated for privilege, which in turn shortens the overall timeline.
However, in situations where production populations have already been defined—such as through search terms, negotiated custodians, or even a previously completed review—starting directly with aiR for Privilege may make more sense. The tool can quickly identify potentially privileged material that must be withheld or further reviewed, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks. Then, if the client is also concerned about producing documents that are potentially damaging, running aiR for Review’s relevance or key document analysis on the production set could give them a better sense of what they are turning over.
By designing workflows that reflect real-world needs, teams can customize aiR processes to match project priorities—whether that’s speed, accuracy, cost, or risk mitigation. The result is an adaptable approach that scales with the complexity of each case.
Augmenting Human Expertise with AI
At its core, aiR doesn’t replace human judgment; it amplifies it. Using aiR is similar to managing a traditional review team, but with far greater speed and consistency.
The process of prompt drafting, iteration, and validation mirrors the knowledge transfer and exercises that experienced project managers conduct at the start of a review. It mimics processes we’ve leveraged in the past while providing the same kind of uniform coding decisions you’d expect from a well-trained team, only achieved in a fraction of the time.
On top of that, this upfront work helps to minimize borderline decisions across aiR’s predictions and find the right balance between overly broad and too-narrow responsiveness and privilege calls. Gathering, solidifying, and calibrating input before a scaled analysis avoids inefficient back-end rework that can present an unfortunate pitfall if you do not apply a strategic approach at the outset.
But that’s not to say human expertise and contributions end after analysis is complete. As aiR delivers first-pass results, SMEs and project leads continue to provide ongoing oversight and perform quality control—confirming the accuracy of responsiveness and privilege calls and ensuring outputs align with legal strategy.
Ultimately, aiR augments the capabilities of review professionals. The result is not only faster project completion, but a higher level of confidence in the results of your doc review.
Conclusion: Human Intelligence, AI Acceleration
aiR for Review and aiR for Privilege, together, transform how legal teams handle massive data sets, empowering them to produce documents and deliver defensible results with less fatigue and greater insight.
In the end, though, the “secret sauce” isn’t just in the technology: it’s in the people who use it and the thoughtful approaches we as practitioners take in leveraging the multiple tools at our disposal. By combining aiR’s capabilities with skilled human oversight, we’re not only improving the efficiency of today’s review models but also setting a new standard for how to approach document review moving forward.
In one of our recent matters, aiR for Review and aiR for Privilege completed the entire workflow in just one week with a single subject matter expert—at a total cost of approximately $14,000. By comparison, a traditional domestic review of the same size and complexity would have required a 24-attorney team and cost roughly $26,000, while a global review team would have come in around $18,000. From a cost-efficiency standpoint, aiR delivered a 46 percent cost reduction against a domestic review and a 23 percent savings compared to a global review, while meeting a tight deadline without the need to assemble and manage a large review team. By the end of the review, the client had developed a strong understanding of our aiR workflows and became more confident in their own prompting abilities.
Across our client base, we see these benefits play out consistently. Our clients that pair aiR for Review with aiR for Privilege typically realize 25–40 percent overall savings while gaining greater clarity, predictability, and control throughout the review process. This combined approach has become a core part of how we support our clients, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Our clients feel more empowered in their workflows, more confident in their results, and better positioned to meet demanding timelines without sacrificing quality.
Graphics for this article were created by Caroline Patterson.
