A Look Into the Crystal Ball: Data Predictions for Legal in 2022
As we welcome the new year, we took an internal poll of our team and asked them about legal trends they saw in 2021 and what they predicted for 2022. Here is what they had to say:
Even More Precise ESI Collections
Vaish Palavalli, Percipient’s Head of Forensics, predicts that in 2022 the trend of more targeted ESI (electronically stored information) collections will continue. As forensic and e-discovery technology continues its advancement, collection search precision increases. More precise collections also mean more valuable and detailed reporting to gain a better understanding of data on devices.
Collection of Ephemeral Messaging
Vaish also notes that the requests for forensic collection of mobile devices continue to grow in legal matters and that legal teams must be aware that the use of ephemeral messaging may complicate things.
Increased Use of AI
Sensitivity to legal budgets continues to be a top priority for our customers. To those ends, leveraging artificial intelligence can help sift through data and lessen the amount that must be analyzed for a legal project (thereby decreasing costs). Percipient Document Review Team Leader Maire Catherine Considine believes that the increase in client requests for use of artificial intelligence and technology-assisted review in their projects over the last couple of years will continue. She expects that in 2022 clients will continue to embrace the value of tools such as Brainspace and other artificial intelligence applications to help reduce the cost of projects by aiding their review.
Leveraging Software Features to Increase Legal Document Review Efficiency
Similar to the increased use of AI during document reviews, Maire Catherine’s other legal trend prediction is that clients will continue to benefit from increased document review efficiency by using features beyond AI such as Logikcull’s inclusive email detection feature. Inclusive email detection identifies the most inclusive email in a thread permitting reviewers to view and code an entire conversation in a single email rather than having to review every back and forth in the chain. Maire Catherine and her team use this feature to great success for clients in largely managed document reviews cutting review volume significantly.
Increased Use of Collaboration Tools
Adam Szulczewski, another of Percipient’s Review Managers, expects to see continued and increased use of collaboration tools. This is especially true as distributed work continues to be the norm. This means that legal teams must not overlook collecting data from these tools when gathering information for investigations, regulatory compliance, and subpoena compliance. Many document review tools nowadays offer direct connections to collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams permitting seamless data collection.
Rising Cyber Risks
Project manager Joe Eliya expects that increasing cyber attacks will force businesses of all kinds to become more familiar with cybersecurity. Legal is not immune from cybersecurity concerns and Joe expects cybersecurity education and preparedness will be front and center for legal operations professionals and law firms in 2022.
