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Innovative Thinking Part 2: Take Control of Your Data with These 14 Solutions

Drew Deitch

With 26 submissions for the 2017 Innovation Awards, there were too many to mention in one post. All of the submissions are being highlighted this week in a three-part series. The second post in the series shares tools to handle new or challenging data types as well as data transformation, management, and normalization.

Yesterday we shared six tools—created by the Relativity community—to help improve collaboration and make project management more efficient. Today, we’re highlighting 14 Innovation Award submissions that allow you to overcome various new or unique data challenges.

Check out the innovations, including seven that take on new or challenging data types and seven to help you transfer, manage, and normalize data:

Handling New or Challenging Data Types

1. Anexsys – RTK.Message

As external chat systems and social media are becoming increasingly common, Anexsys recognized a need to review this data. They created RTK.Message to import, filter, and review message data from enterprise chat and social media sources, such as Twitter, as Relativity documents. The application has a built-in processing engine, which supports a variety of message formats as well as a message parser framework which allows new sources to be rapidly created.

2. Control Risks – AV-X

Control Risks teams needed a better way to review audio and video data during investigations. They created AV-X to transcribe and review audio and video files from within the native Relativity viewer. The transcriptions are associated with the various input channels and each sound is scored for algorithmic confidence. Text can be edited for increased accuracy and indexed to become fully searchable, review and redactions are made easier with automatic parsing of audio into sections, and built-in translation allows for side-by-side comparison of the transcribed source language and the translated version.

3. Evolver - XLerator

Excel review can be a manual effort that slows down projects. Evolver created XLerator to eliminate the timeworn process by allowing users to review, redact, and produce native Excels, without leaving Relativity or using the native Excel application. XLerator handles large data sets, allows for many redaction types and mass redactions, de-duplicates files, tracks audit history, and more, all while syncing with familiar Relativity features such as permissions, mass actions, and searching.

4. Haystack ID – Cellebrite Integrator

Mobile devices are becoming unavoidable in e-discovery. Haystack built Cellebrite Integrator to review and produce data extracted from mobile devices in Relativity. A recently added feature, message level de-duplication, allows for a time variance window when flagging duplicates. De-duplication can be performed across multiple devices and extraction types, including iChats harvested from computers.

5. iDiscovery Solutions – MobileThread

iDiscovery Solutions created MobileThread to import, review, search, and produce mobile device conversations in a native format. Texts, chats, and other SMS and MMS conversations can be reviewed in Relativity with metadata preserved, conversation and message relationships maintained, and full search capabilities in place.

6. QDiscovery – QMobile Insight

QDiscovery noticed a lot of manual work being done to review mobile data. They created QMobile Insight to review and produce mobile data in Relativity the same way as other ESI, allowing them to search and analyze mobile data (including emojis) and quickly identify patterns in mobile data sets—which can consist of tens of thousands of texts, call records, and voicemails. QMobile leverages Relativity dashboards and custom views to allow analysis of previously hard-to-handle mobile collections.

7. XACT Data Discovery – BlackBar 2.0

To overcome the challenging process of redacting spreadsheets, XACT Data Discovery created BlackBar, a tool allowing users to redact spreadsheets directly in the native Excel application. When the case team is ready to produce, spreadsheets can be finalized, removing all redacted content and extracting updated text. BlackBar 2.0 allows color-coded redactions, redaction recovery, improved duplicate record handling, custom mass actions to prepare and finalize bulk document sets, and increased performance.

Data Transformation, Management, and Normalization

8. Compliance Discovery Solutions – Custom Data Transfer Tool

To tackle the complexities of securely transferring data from their clients, Compliance created a simple drag-and-drop processing tool that takes data from transfer to publish in one step. Built on Relativity and integrated with IBM’s efficient transfer tool, Aspera, the solution allows their clients to securely transfer their own data to Compliance, giving clients more control over data loading.

9. Control Risks – FL-X

Working in the global investigations space, Control Risks deals with a lot of foreign language data. To automate translation on the fly, they developed FL-X. Fully integrated with Relativity, the translated text can be added to the index and made searchable. Files can be translated into many languages, all accessible in line with the original file in the Relativity environment. With the ability to leverage machine translation, they can limit the need for native-speaker review and analysis to only the most relevant of the data set.

10. Envision Discovery and McGuire Woods – Privilege Thread Logger

When opposing counsel in a matter insisted that all missing emails in all threads be logged in the database, McGuire Woods reached out to Envision. They created the Privilege Thread Logger to identify missing emails, log each as an individual record, normalize the names for any privilege log, and segment all the threads in an email, allowing for targeted searching.

11. Fidelity National Financial – Automated DAT Conversion Tool

When Fidelity National Financial needed to migrate 500 Clearwell matters into Relativity, they created a solution to automatically convert Clearwell tags to Relativity choices so they could be imported using the Relativity Desktop Client. The tool has saved them months of manual conversions on these files, while also removing the possibility of manual errors. 

12. Haystack ID – Production Assistant

To solve the time-consuming issue of converting endless potential formats into clean, accurate data files that are up-to-spec with individual client requirements, Haystack ID created Production Assistant. The tool effectively automates the process of adjusting load files in accordance with varied specifications. It also offers automated templates that can be used when communicating with major regulatory entities such as the SEC and the DOJ.

13. Kilpatrick Townsend – LitSmart® Exhibit Sticker

Last minute scrambles to insert exhibit stickers, whether electronically or by hand, are commonplace in litigation. Kilpatrick Townsend developed the LitSmart® Exhibit Sticker to reduce this challenge. Fully integrated with Relativity, the application enables users to add exhibit stickers—tailored to the case and court—with the click of a button. This not only reduces time and money spent, but also reduces the risk of error. 

14. Sandline Discovery – Review Language Localizer

When one of Sandline Discovery’s clients in Asia asked if Relativity’s interface could display the language they were reviewing, they developed an application to localize workspaces quickly and easily, so any regional review team can improve the workflow for non-English users. Views, layouts, and fields can be renamed with any Unicode character set through a simple and intuitive interface.

If you missed yesterday’s post, catch up with the Innovation Awards submissions that improve collaboration and project management, and learn about the six remaining submissions tomorrow. You can also check them out on the Community Choice award voting page.


Drew Deitch is commercial lead of Relativity Patents, where he helps patent attorneys and searchers work faster with AI. He's been at Relativity for 10 years, in roles supporting our strategic partnerships, executive team, and product strategy.

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