Aware Tames Data Sprawl to Simplify Modern eDiscovery

 Legacy eDiscovery applications, built for email, are leaving legal departments and compliance teams ill-equipped to handle eDiscovery across collaboration platforms. 

COLUMBUS, Ohio, January 26, 2024 -- Aware, the leading AI Data Platform for eDiscovery, today announced expanded capabilities for legal teams designed to facilitate a more efficient and thorough preservation, collections, and review process across modern collaboration platforms. With these expanded capabilities, legal teams gain accurate context faster than legacy solutions. 

“Visibility into collaboration data is mission-critical to conducting eDiscovery today, but traditional technologies were designed for e-mail, not tools like Slack or Zoom. Needing to unify your data, managing false positives, sifting through JSON files to uncover context - these tasks slow down a very time–sensitive process,” says Brian Mannion, Chief Legal Officer at Aware. “The Aware platform uses the power of AI to simplify your workflow by surfacing and managing the right data, in the right context, at the right time – which is something every practitioner can get behind.”  

With this launch Aware’s capabilities include search and export for users of Slack Business+, in addition to the release of Search Select, a batch-collection experience for Slack users interested in introducing the power of AI to their eDiscovery workstream. 

Collaboration tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams and Workplace from Meta have become the new hub of the digital workplace, with teams spending upwards of 57% of their day using these platforms. While these tools have transformed how workplaces communicate, the massive amounts of unstructured data they create has made conducting efficient and thorough eDiscovery harder than ever. According to the 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle for Legal and Compliance Technologies, continued sprawl of discoverable data sources is one of the biggest obstacles facing legal teams today. 

Recent litigation has brought these eDiscovery challenges to the forefront, and companies are now struggling with this data sprawl, needing to manage message visibility, revisions, and the presence of file types like emojis and gifs across multiple platforms. Legacy solutions were not built to handle these nuances, leaving legal teams with inadequate workflows that are costly, deliver an incomplete picture and leave teams unable to meet the aggressive deadlines associated with investigations and court-ordered requests. 

Aware reduces the cost, time and risks associated with modern eDiscovery with its purpose-built AI data platform. Aware ingests, normalizes, contextualizes, and enriches collaboration data from across your ecosystem. By unifying the data in a single, secure, and defensible location, teams can preserve, collect, and review results through a single pane of glass. 

1. Prevent spoliation of evidence with a full data management suite that includes legal holds.  
2. Surface contextual results via real time or batched processing through a variety of search parameters with pinpoint accuracy – complete with metadata, revisions, and reactions. 
3. Use AI-powered filtering to eliminate noisy, irrelevant results. 
4. Eliminate the need to manually process clunky JSON files by reviewing results in your format of choice, including threaded messages with in-line results. 
5. Leverage Aware’s library of export formats and integrations, such as Relativity’s RSMF format, to enable more effective document review and early case assessment. 

These capabilities are made possible by the Aware platform and proprietary AI/ML models. Aware’s targeted models are trained on billions of collaboration conversations for the express purpose of enabling eDiscovery at scale. Models are continually optimized and deployed thanks to a continual pipeline of collaboration data, resulting in both industry-leading accuracy and speed. The result? Reliable, cost-effective, and thorough eDiscovery-and fewer of the false positives that can derail an investigation. Regardless of the complexity of the case, Aware empowers teams to handle investigations with confidence and accuracy. 

Aware’s expanded offering of solutions and features are available immediately, and include: 

• Search Select – A lightweight search application ideal for legal teams looking to implement the power of AI for ad-hoc collection of Slack messages. Custodian-based search pulls data from your collaboration platforms only when you need it. 
• Slack Business+ Upload – Business+ customers unlock the ability to upload, search and review JSON exports from Slack for a 360-degree view of collaboration communication without the need to upgrade to Slack Enterprise Grid. 
• RSMF exports – Results from searches are now load-ready for import into the leading legal platform Relativity. 
• Enhanced pdfs – Introducing a new PDF export type that includes results in a threaded and conversational format, complete with in-line images, enabling easy understanding and dissemination that goes beyond the legal department. 
• Export configuration options – Unlock more control over your eDiscovery results. Granularly select the amount of surrounding context and choose how different file types are included in your exports. 
• Increased file size and speed – The fastest search functionality in the industry is now even faster. Take advantage of increased maximum export file size and speedier export packaging.  

There are a few ways teams can explore Aware’s capabilities: 

• Join us for a meeting at Legalweek January 29-February 1. 
• Sign up for a free one-month trial of Aware’s AI-powered search for your Slack data.  
• Learn more about Aware’s solutions for legal teams here. 

About Aware:  

Aware's AI Data Platform unifies workplace conversations taking place on Slack, Teams, WebEx by Cisco, Workplace by Meta, and anywhere where collaboration takes place. AwareIQ, using Aware's purpose-built ML models deliver accurate insights and answers to solve a broad set of use cases, from Governance, Risk and Compliance to eDiscovery and Cybersecurity. Supported by platform APIs that connect these insights into existing workflows for over 2,500 different applications, businesses can safely and securely make AI accessible to everyone across the enterprise. Customers include the world's #1 retailer, food and beverage manufacturer, airline, and restaurant by revenue.  Aware was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.