kCura's e-Discovery Tool is Found in the Best Law Firms in the World

(This article was translated from the print version of ITWIZ article)

kCura is the leader of e-discovery software market. Its software Relativity is being used by major consulting firms, law firms, corporations, and even the US Department of Justice. The company’s founder Andrew (Andrzej) Sieja is of Polish descent. Polish office to provide support to documents search and analytics in the best law firms in the world kCura is the leader of the e-discovery software market.  Its software Relativity is being used by major consulting firms, law firms, corporations, and even the US Department of Justice. The company’s founder Andrew Sieja is of Polish descent. Andrew Sieja is a 40-year-old resident of Chicago. For years, he has visited Poland for family reasons, but now it’s mainly for business. Last year he opened kCura’s new development office in Krakow. He is leading one of the most interesting companies in the software development field. Many corporate giants like IBM and Microsoft may envy him. kCura was founded in 2001. Starting off as a software consulting company, kCura’s team was asked by one of their customers to create software for documents search. When the customer did not buy the product, the company secured the rights on its invention and continued to focus on developing the software. Since 2007, kCura has been developing the e-discovery software. Today Relativity is being used by more than 130 thousand users. The company has offices not only in Chicago, but also in Portland, London, Hong Kong, Australia and - most recently - in Krakow. kCura listed 31st on Deloitte's Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology companies in North America. The market value for e-discovery solutions is estimated at $10 billion. Short report instead of 700 million documents The concept of e-discovery is extremely broad – the process is being devoted to search key information across documents, databases, e-mails and spreadsheets. With the help of dedicated software, it is possible to scan and collect relevant documents, which are then getting analyzed and finally end up being used as evidence in a case. The process helps facilitate the work of investigators, lawyers and reviewers. The solution is being used by the law enforcement agencies around the world, including the FBI, antitrust authorities, and law firms. With the current amount of data being generated, its manual collection and analysis would be very time-consuming, if not impossible. The best example is the largest legal proceedings, where kCura’s software was used for search and analysis of 700 million documents. At this scale, we're talking about looking for a needle in a haystack. Teams of lawyers are not able to analyze hundreds of thousands or millions of documents. Meanwhile, e-discovery proportionality can be highly restrictive, sometimes for only a dozen or so pages. e-Discovery software is often used in resolving disputes between two parties. In the United States - still the primary market for kCura - 90% of cases between companies were resolved while utilizing e-discovery technology, instead of the traditional way, to agree on settlements. KCura’s Software Recognized by Gartner kCura already employs 600 people worldwide. In Poland, the company’s office is focused on software development. Their London site is the sales office for Europe. European customers today account for 15% of all signed contracts. The list of clients is impressive, including 195 of the 200 largest American law firms and the Department of Justice. Also, some of the biggest German banks, including Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, as well as the Big Four firms, including KPMG and PwC among others. kCura’s software has been used by companies in more than 40 countries. kCura was highly recognized and named the leader by Gartner’s 2015 Magic Quadrant for E-Discovery Software, the industry report providing analysis of 20 software solutions, including IBM, Catalyst, Microsoft, Symantec, HP and Xerox among others. "The success of our software is based on three principles. First, we are able to analyze a very large amount of data in a short period of time. Second, our solution is extremely flexible. kCura software can process 100 thousand documents as well as 100 million and identify necessary data. Third, our software is user-friendly. Our customers, regardless of their technical background, can always deliver on their projects with the help of Relativity."- says Andrzej Sieja. It is important that Relativity doesn’t require much on-site tech support. In general, Relativity is no different from any other enterprise software in terms of ease of use. The company also provides multiple software certifications to meet the needs of every customer. Future Plans "The e-discovery market is constantly growing. According to industry reports, there’s an evolving demand and business need for software in this field. We’re focused on the continuous improvement of our company’s offering" - says Andrzej Sieja, when asked about the future plans for kCura. For this very purpose, kCura opened a development center in Krakow. The company is working on building a strong team of engineers in the Polish city, to expand the existing global team of tech and business geeks.  The decision in favor of Krakow was made based on the talent pool and proximity to highly acclaimed universities. What does Andrew Sieja think about kCura’s operations in the US, as the company is located in the Mid-West, outside of Silicon Valley? “Proximity to Silicon Valley is important for connecting with investors and benefiting from their on-site consulting. Chicago is a great location – in-between west and east coasts - to keep in touch with our customers and respond to their requests in a timely fashion. While being far from one of the tech capitals of the world, there’s a challenge in finding tech talent. This is one of the reasons for opening development offices around the world, where tech professionals are in abundance,” he says. Big Data Analytics for Lawyers It is worth noting that Relativity is best utilized at certain scale. This type of solution does not fit in a small office, where it is sufficient to hire trainees to go through just dozens of binders. e-Discovery technology is applied to thousands and millions of documents, when data analysis is time consuming.

After learning about Relativity, now I have a better understanding of big data analytics in the legal field. Traceability, cataloging and searching millions of documents - in order to find the relevant matters - has become an indispensable work tool for lawyers, analysts, and investigators. Andrzej Sieja expects the e-discovery market to grow along with the explosive growth of data and legal disputes.