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by Aware
Aware had an amazing opportunity to spend last week with the legaltech industry at Legalweek '22. It was great to be in-person for a dynamic event focusing on all things legal, compliance, and eDiscovery.
Here are our team’s reflections on key learnings from the event.
Know Your Data
With remote work comes an ever-growing range of collaboration and productivity applications. Each of these can create vast amounts of unstructured data. From private and public Slack channels to Box Notes and Zoom Chat, organizations are learning that they have data scattered across their digital ecosystems.
For legal and compliance experts, condoning the usage or flexible management of these tools is no longer optional. Whether you like it or not, the debate around managing this data is over. Going forward, organizations must find the proper way to support knowledge management while still meeting legal obligations. That means securing all the data their employees create, wherever it resides.
When it comes to data governance, it's clear that understanding your ecosystem and creating a data map is the first step to implementing and enforcing the right policies across the organization. That can pose a significant challenge, as employees may have introduced shadow IT products outside of authorized programs and tools. However the courts have made it clear they expect organizations to be able to present collaboration data in eDiscovery.
We heard that most organizations are still shifting from reactive to proactive governance strategies. Over the coming year, this will be a core focus of many Legal and IT departments.
eDiscovery Tech is a Partnership Ecosystem
The variety of exhibitors over the three floors of the conference illustrated one fact clearly. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. Archiving, eDiscovery, and AI-driven technology offer organizations more choices than ever before.
To support the EDRM, it would be wise for organizations to take stock of their existing legal tech stack. Only then can the right investments be made in tools that can support strategic legal decision-making and reduce the cost of eDiscovery.
We also heard debate across sessions and the exhibit hall on when to make the business case for using AI in the eDiscovery process. We know the collaboration ecosystem is growing exponentially. That includes digital conversations, transcripts, and audio/video messages. Aware's AI models can analyze and identify sentiment and toxicity in collaboration conversations. Including this technology in workflows can help reduce time in eDiscovery.
The Convergence of eDiscovery & Cybersecurity
Cyber attacks were also top of mind at Legalweek. Particularly with reference to their growing effect on legal teams. We heard lots about the relationship between eDiscovery and incident response in combating cyber threats. We also explored non-traditional uses of eDiscovery tools in those scenarios. This convergence makes a great case for implementing AI within eDiscovery.
Building relationships between security and incident response teams is also critical. Ensuring teams use the right technology helps prevent breaches and meet legal requirements. Being proactive, not reactive, is key to mitigating risks.
At Aware, we're committed to providing a single platform to support governance, risk, and compliance of collaboration conversations. Our tech supports data loss prevention, immutable archiving, and federated search. Leveraged for eDiscovery, legal holds, and internal investigations, Aware provides the convergence of data management required to moderate the digital workplace. As unstructured data continues to emerge, this is an ideal opportunity to align Legal and IT through a single vendor selection.
For more context on how to align legal and IT risks, check out our whitepaper.
