(West Chicago, Illinois) – RiverGlass, Inc., a leading provider of electronic discovery (eDiscovery) and investigation technologies, and CP Document Technologies, an industry leader in litigation support services and data management solutions today announced they have entered into a strategic partnership. This partnership positions CP Document Technologies as one of RiverGlass’ esteemed Gold Certified partners offering RiverGlass Solutions for eDiscovery.

“RiverGlass has been adopted by a number AMLAW 200 firms and Fortune 500 corporations. Our strategic alliance with CP Document Technologies brings our combined offerings to the Southern California market. CP Document Technologies has established itself as a leader in the competitive service provider market, offering a comprehensive array of services and working with some of the most prestigious law firms and corporations in the country. We are excited about partnering with them and growing our combined offering,” said Mary Pat Poteet, RiverGlass VP of eDiscovery.

“RiverGlass Solutions for eDiscovery provides next-generation capabilities for Early Data Assessment. The technology is robust and has several highly differentiated capabilities. We believe the ability to collect from the web, process both unstructured and structured data and provide advanced analytics are potential game changers and that’s why we chose to partner with RiverGlass,” stated Edward Kim, Sr. Vice President, CP Document Technologies.

About RiverGlass

RiverGlass, Inc. (www.riverglassinc.com) is a leading provider of advanced information collection, data management and analysis solutions. The company was formed in 2003 and leverages eight years and $20mm of R&D efforts from the former Mosaic development teams at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). RiverGlass provides solutions to government agencies and commands in defense, intelligence and law enforcement as well as eDiscovery and risk management applications to major corporations and law firms. RiverGlass is a private company with principal offices in West Chicago and Champaign, Illinois. The development of the RiverGlass technologies was funded in part through a grant by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

About CP Document Technologies

CP Document Technologies (www.copypage.com) offers a full suite of services that includes data collection, data forensics, privileged/responsive review, and 100% quality review of all images produced in Electronic Data Discovery. CP Document Technologies has the ability to work with multiple hardware and software systems, and to create task teams to collect data from anywhere in the US and in some instances outside the US.

Contact

Pete Carroll
RiverGlass, Inc.
630.578.4264
pcarroll@riverglassinc.com

(West Chicago, Illinois) – RiverGlass, Inc. announced a strategic partnership with one of the leading electronic discovery & practice management consulting firms, Litigation Logistics, LLC, as part of its Fast Start Program (FSP) in the legal market. The FSP initiative was launched in the first quarter of 2011, as a response to the interest from leading service providers working with RiverGlass to form a strong partnership. The company is building off its fourth quarter success working directly with leading law firms and corporations to use RiverGlass® Solutions for eDiscovery™ for regulatory inquiries, internal investigations and litigation matters.

“As we looked to build upon our success late last year, it was becoming clear to us that in addition to working directly with corporate in-house and law firms, we should strategically align our solution with eDiscovery service providers and consulting firms who are leaders within their space. We began discussions at LegalTech New York, identifying key litigation management consulting firms & leading eDiscovery companies. We are very excited at the opportunity work with Litigation Logistics as they not only understand the value RiverGlass brings to their clients, but also add in-depth knowledge of cost containment through their legal data management lifecycle. We are excited about their ability to provide advisory services and implement our solution for their clients in ways that address complex legal data lifecycle management issues. It is clear that our advanced technology and predictable pricing model along with the ability to gather social content was key in creating a difference in our solution versus other leading products in the market,” said Kirk Dauksavage, RiverGlass CEO.

“These partnerships are integral to the success of RiverGlass,” observed Mary Pat Poteet, RiverGlass Vice President of eDiscovery. “I am extremely excited to begin working with Litigation Logistics. Their deep consultative practice and understanding of the strengths of the RiverGlass application will help their clients wade through the huge volumes of data and get a firm handle on the information,” concluded Ms. Poteet.

“The hallmark of our business strategy centers on leveraging our domain expertise by implementing ‘best in class’ technologies that provide unprecedented cost containment and data risk management solutions for our clients. We are pleased to announce the recent partnership with RiverGlass and will aggressively integrate the technology in our portfolio of solutions, stated Tim Matuszewski, Sr. Vice President of Litigation Logistics, LLC. “The technology and defensible workflow incorporates prevailing electronic discovery standards and best practices that are emerging today. The solution brings greater efficiencies, flexibility and an unprecedented level of accuracy that provides a high level of quality control & assurance to the process.”

“In this current economic climate, the emerging trend is that law firms are offering alternative fee arrangements for their corporate clients. To safeguard our own clients from exorbitant eDiscovery costs, Litigation Logistics offers case and predictable pricing options to offset the increasing costs of litigation. There is tremendous interest from our clients in deploying RiverGlass technology for their matters,” summarized Mr. Matuszewski.

(West Chicago, Illinois) – D4, LLC, a national leader in eDiscovery solutions for law firms and corporate in-house counsel, and RiverGlass, Inc., a leading provider of advanced information collection and analysis solutions, announced today that the two companies have signed an agreement to form a strategic partnership for D4 to distribute, install and host the RiverGlass solutions.

In the first quarter of 2011, RiverGlass announced a Fast Start Program which incorporates RiverGlass’ solutions with the top eDiscovery vendors’ support services. D4’s highly-technical method to eDiscovery and digital forensics leverages the maximum benefits available from the RiverGlass application.

“As we looked to build upon our success late last year, it was becoming clear to us that in addition to working directly with law firms we should be offering our solution to some of their most trusted partners in the service provider business. Our current client base put us in touch with D4 and it became clear over the next couple of months that our strategic goals were very well aligned,” said Kirk Dauksavage, RiverGlass CEO.'

“As Electronically Stored Information (ESI) volume continues to grow, our customers require more cost effective, collect and pre-review, early data analytics functionality to organize, visualize and cull ESI at a macro level,” said Tom Groom, D4 Vice President of Discovery Engineering. “With RiverGlass, our customers can harvest from many different types of data stores and ingest ESI in native format without having to have it processed. This includes network stores, SharePoint sites, websites, social media, as well as structured databases. Users can then interact with and visualize data in various ways using RiverGlass as they identify groups of documents to export for a more detailed review. RiverGlass exports can be loaded directly into review applications, such as Relativity, without having to first go through processing. This makes the ROI provided by the RiverGlass solution very compelling for our customers.”

“I am extremely excited to begin working with D4,” said Mary Pat Poteet, RiverGlass Vice President of eDiscovery. “D4 has a very strong technical approach and really understand the strengths of the RiverGlass application and how it can help their clients wade through the huge volumes of data and get a firm handle on the information.”

D4 and RiverGlass will be at the CEIC 2011 Conference in Orlando, May 15–18, booth number 707. Please call D4 at 800-410-7066 to schedule a meeting or demonstration.

"As we looked at opportunities in the commercial space, we were struck by the similarities of the problems facing the legal community to those we helped solve in the intelligence and law enforcements sectors. We knew we had a strong, differentiating technology and our discussions with thought leaders at the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference in August confirmed our belief there was a need for our product in the market," said Kirk Dauksavage, RiverGlass CEO.

Over the last three months, the company has further engaged with leading law firms to use the RiverGlass solution on live case data. The results and feedback from these firms has been extremely valuable, as RiverGlass continues to refine its offering to best serve the market and those AMLAW 100 firms who have signed on to the EAP program.

"When I joined the company this past summer," observed Mary Pat Poteet, RiverGlass Vice-President of eDiscovery, "I knew that if my former colleagues could see for themselves how the RiverGlass solution could fundamentally advance the entire eDiscovery process prior to attorney review, through its effective handling of varied content types and sources, including the Internet, through its intelligent search, smart analytics and power visualizations, they would be sold. I am extremely gratified by the five firms and their response to our Early Adopter Program and to the technology itself -- and I look forward to working with the additional prospects we have in the pipeline as we begin the new year."

"We were very please with the performance and advanced technology of the RiverGlass solution on one of our live cases," said Chris Acosta, Litigation Support Manager at Nossaman LLP, a Los Angeles based law firm. "The ability for the paralegals to interact with the system, as well as our partners, to do early case strategy was unmatched." In addition to the advanced technology, Mr. Acosta stated, "The ROI provided by the RiverGlass solution was very compelling."

"The RiverGlass results were very impressive," stated Kimberly Scott, an associate at Miller Canfield. "The technology quickly and efficiently helped us identify key information. In addition, we feel that social media is going to play a larger part in litigation matters and RiverGlass offers the capability to find web-based information outside the firewall." Additionally, Ms. Scott commented, "Our clients expect us to help control their eDiscovery costs and I believe that RiverGlass is a very effective tool for accomplishing that goal."

TCG: How did you initially break into Litigation Support/E-Discovery?

MPP: I started in Litigation Support as a project assistant 20 years ago. I moved my way up the ladder because I wasn't afraid of technology. As such, I found my day to day life consumed with databases.

TCG: What is your thought about transitioning from law firms to a vendor?

MPP: I have to say I was a bit nervous about moving to the vendor side. However, I find that I am doing a lot of the same types of things. My ultimate goal is still finding the best solution for my clients. My clients just happen to include law firms and service providers now, as well as corporations.

TCG: What excites you the most about joining RiverGlass specifically?

MPP: The technology and the people. RiverGlass has some of the coolest technology and the smartest people and I am thoroughly enjoying both!

TCG: What about the opportunity made it most appealing?

MPP: RiverGlass has some of the most cutting edge technology around. I love the thought of riding that cutting edge and watching clients reap the benefits!

TCG: What advice would you give to job seekers out there in the lit support market today?

MPP: Be patient. Be open to possibilities. Don't take things too personally. Network!! I can't stress enough how important it is to talk to your colleagues; put yourself into situations where you can meet new people; be confident in your skills; look for ways to enhance your abilities; read every opinion that comes down and those that came down in the past couple of years that have to do with E-Discovery issues. Be prepared!

TCG: What do you think working at RiverGlass will add to your career? How do you think it will help you transition to the next level?

MPP: RiverGlass is giving me an opportunity to work at a higher level - I am getting business experience; product development experience and continuing to develop my relationship building skills. In general, I am getting a feel for what the folks on "the other side of the fence" have to deal with on a daily basis. I think this experience will give me greater possibilities as my career develops.

TCG: What three things were key in evaluating the opportunity at RiverGlass?

MPP: I considered the viability of the technology, the environment/people I would be working with and the overall impact on my career as a whole. First, I believe in RiverGlass, both its technology and its people - from the Board to the programmers and everyone in between. I have the privilege of working with some of the smartest people around. With some luck, some of their smarts will rub off on me! As far as my career, I didn't want a job where I would be standing still - RiverGlass is an opportunity for me to expand my skills while being part of an exciting company delivering cutting edge solutions to the very real issues in E-Discovery.

TCG: What do you think your greatest challenge will be in your first 6 months at RiverGlass?

MPP: My greatest challenge will be establishing a strong client base for a new product. I believe this will also be one of my greatest opportunities.

Mary Pat Poteet– formerly National Litigation Support Director at DLA Piper US LLP (San Diego, CA) – has signed on as Vice-President of eDiscovery at RiverGlass Inc.

Ms. Poteet, a National Expert on Electronic Discovery and Litigation Support, was a founding participant of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (sections on search, identification and metrics). She is currently an officer of the International Legal Technology Association -- Litigation Support Peer Group, Vice President and also serves on the editorial board of Litigation Today magazine. She has co-authored several papers and is a frequent speaker at legal technology industry seminars and conferences – including the upcoming ILTA conference in Las Vegas.

“RiverGlass will benefit greatly from the experience and knowledge Mary Pat has garnered over the impressive course of her 20-year career,” observes Kirk Dauksavage, CEO of RiverGlass Inc. Our strongest commercial growth area is the eDiscovery market and Mary Pat’s background is spot-on to help guide our strategy and execution in that software arena.  We feel very fortunate to have her as a member of the RiverGlass team.”

“RiverGlass’ meaning-based approach to intelligent data assessment and targeted collections will fundamentally advance the entire eDiscovery process prior to attorney review. The only hope for reining in the time and cost associated with litigation support is agility in handling the escalating explosion of content types and sources – including the Internet – that come into play in today’s legal information landscape. RiverGlass’ unique content collection and analytics technology was designed to take on just these types of challenges – enterprises and practitioners that step up and embrace these new solutions will be at a clear tactical and strategic advantage in protecting their interests,” said Ms Poteet. 

The following article by William Laurent originally appeared in the May 26, 2010 issue of Dashboard Insight

During a recent conversation with one of my peers that hails from across the Atlantic Ocean, the topic turned to geopolitics. My esteemed colleague casually bemoaned that “Western European countries were ruled by labor unions.”  But saving the best part for last, he sheepishly smiled and sardonically confided: “However, here in the USA, everything is ruled by the lawyers!” I lauded him for his accurate insight, which as it turns out, was based on a recent turn of events at his company, where existing corporate litigation woes were being exacerbated by flawed document-retention policies and poor email archiving practices.

Business life is becoming increasingly more litigious for all companies.  For larger Fortune 1000 business organizations, ongoing legal and compliance costs have gone from excessive to obscene.  A never-ending pipeline of lawsuits and day-by-day legal wrangling is eating away at corporate profits like never before, putting the very existence of even the most solid of enterprises in peril.  Companies that are proactive in managing their business documents and internal/external electronic correspondence will better weather the inevitable deluge of future legal actions, whether they are a plaintiff, defendant or the recipient of a subpoena.

The legal discovery phase of litigation, where companies are required to produce a variety of historical documents and other knowledge that is relevant to a particular legal action, can often be the most important component of said litigation.  Failure to reign in the costs associated with legal discovery (and failures to comply with judicial mandates that require an organization to produce specific documents or correspondence) can result in dire consequences financially.  With the computing revolution of the last 20 years, the focus of legal discovery has alighted on electronically enabled and stored information - more specifically, the electronic discovery (E-discovery for short) of text, voice and video assets of interest.  Electronic information such as emails, instant messages, scanned documents and shared/networked spreadsheet and word processor files now make up the bulwark of legal discovery requests.

Vendors of business intelligence (BI) software have been rushing to market a number of E-discovery solutions that help companies save considerable sums of money when it comes to legal discovery and retention, as they greatly reduce the time spent on satisfying legal demands for documentation on corporate actions and processes.  One vendor of renown that has made great strides in the legal discovery support space is Riverglass Inc., a bleeding-edge vendor of business intelligence software which I have mentioned previously in Dashboard Insight.  Riverglass has identified four critical elements that are vital to the success of E-discovery.  They strategically embedded these elements in their software products; they are reach, relevance, repeatability and reliability.

• Reach is all about knowing exactly where information resides and having the ability to retrieve that information, many times penetrating hidden pockets of data or deep-searching non-traditional data sources or silos of unstructured information.
• Relevance means applying some sort of semantic or contextual meaning to information discovery and text searching in order to best support and streamline subsequent analytic tasks.  Deduplication and custom categorization and classification of data will be key drivers of ensuring relevance.
• In order to achieve a suitable and sustainable return on investment, it is essential that E-discovery actions are highly repeatable—that automated discovery processes can run again and again over time and always produce the desired results with a modicum of variance.
• Reliable.  E-discovery decrees a high echelon of transparency (of how data is indexed, searched and returned) and an extreme level of knowledge integrity for all search/discovery results.

Lawyers working on litigation cases always try their best to empathize with their clients and understand their core business values and processes.  But they will rarely have the know-how to best manage an E-discovery project from a technological perspective, especially when a legal request for information is not specific enough or there is a huge tome of information (much of it most likely redundant) that must be waded through in order to glean the small nuggets of data that are required to satisfy a discovery request.  Lawyers have never been cheap; they certainly will not become any less expensive in the future.  So it goes without saying that attorneys are probably not the best resources to be scouring corporate messaging applications, voice mails, personal digital assistants, employee laptops and network share areas looking for “needle in a haystack” information.

The type of E-discovery solution required by a business entity will depend not only on technology considerations, but anticipated caseload as well.  For large enterprises, a dedicated legal support system or E-discovery platform is an idea whose time has come. This is especially true for multi-national corporations that are susceptible to dreaded class-action lawsuits and also have to comply with a complex labyrinth of international laws and regulations.

We are already seeing dedicated E-discovery practices materializing at some of the most prestigious and respected law firms in North America.  They are realizing that managing legal discovery projects requires a dual skill set—information technology savvy and legal expertise—that is rarely found “in house” where their clients are concerned.  They are helping clients manage their electronic content with an eye toward litigation; assisting in the scanning of paper documents and the conversion to electronic formats; aiding in the storage of the most important e-documents and attaching metadata to these documents that is then indexed for efficient future retrieval and discovery using a rules-based approach.

What is more, these E-discovery experts help businesses craft sound policies and timelines for document retention and destruction.  Having a very visible and enforceable document-retention policy will ensure that documents and data are disposed of after their legal usefulness has expired, thus reducing the cost of E-discovery considerably.  Keeping huge volumes of old data and documents on corporate storage infrastructure will not only slow down future discovery processes, it will use up additional hardware and storage resources—and having too much data on hand may actually increase a company’s future legal liability.

Click here to read the article on Dashboard Insight

http://www.williamlaurent.com

Legal teams use RiverGlass to help save both time and money in the review and analysis eDiscovery process by culling, preserving and analyzing relevant documents early-on. RiverGlass advanced search and text analytics deliver powerful investigative discovery capabilities – in a user interface that is designed for ease-of use and learning so time spent getting to needed answers is greatly shortened.

Visualizations such as dynamic clustering present the bigger picture while text extraction helps pinpoint important concepts and names of people, places, organizations, etc. – even if those names did not appear in your original set of query terms. Discovery of new information leads to greater insights – and business advantages. Your IT investments are protected since RiverGlass is meant to complement existing software and hardware infrastructures.

PFIC attendees found RiverGlass’ solution, especially when paired with Paraben, is the perfect end-to-end eDiscovery tool set needed to save time and money in all kinds of litigation cases. To learn more about the PFIC and RiverGlass, please visit http://www.pfic2009.com/ and http://www.riverglassinc.com.

“RiverGlass® EssentialScanner is the same technology base upon which we build our intelligent search solutions currently in use at numerous government agencies and corporations. We are excited to make our scanner technology available to the Open Source community and hope our extensive experience working with Lucene will benefit others. We also look forward to a lively, productive interaction with that developer group,” said Doug Marquis, RiverGlass VP of Product Development.

Users of RiverGlass® EssentialScanner can take advantage of technical support programs for direct access to RiverGlass’ Lucene experts in helping to quickly resolve any issues developers have during project build-out – no matter the stage – to ensure effective, efficient software development.  

Additionally, users can license cutting-edge analytics for building even more powerful search solutions. Offered à la carte or as bundled packages, users can enhance the capabilities of RiverGlass® EssentialScanner by adding features like context driven page ranking, conceptual search and entity extraction.

For complete technical specifications and to download RiverGlass® EssentialScanner – as well as for more information on available support programs – please visit us at www.riverglassinc.com. Downloads are also possible through www.sourceforge.net.

About RiverGlass

RiverGlass, Inc. (www.riverglassinc.com) is a leading provider of intelligent information search, collection and analysis solutions. The company was formed in 2003 to commercialize eight years of grant-funded research at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. RiverGlass provides application solution to government agencies and command in defense; intelligence; law enforcement; and major corporations. RiverGlass is a private company with principal offices in West Chicago, Illinois and Champaign, Illinois.

The development of the RiverGlass technologies was funded in part through a grant by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

The project is provided through Alabama Department of Homeland Security (ADHS) grant funding with the multi-year RFP awarded by ACJIC to RiverGlass, Inc. and Analysts International Corporation.

"As the mission of the nation's Fusion centers' has grown to encompass crimes and hazards not envisioned in their original charters, it is very critical that our state's Fusion Center systems are connected so that vital information can be effectively disseminated to first responders in accordance with the federal government's guidelines," said ACJIC Director Maury Mitchell. "This powerful product allows us to gain improved agility that we need to solve the challenges as Alabama's law enforcement and public safety community moves forward."

The Alabama Fusion Center is one of 60 such entities established by the U.S. government's National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan. Designed to expand information collection and sharing practices among law enforcement agencies, the private sector and the intelligence community, the Fusion Center provides an effective and efficient mechanism to exchange information and intelligence, maximize resources, streamline operations and improve the ability to fight crime and terrorism by merging data from a variety of sources.

Alabama's Fusion Center is administered through a partnership among ADHS, ACJIC and the Alabama Department of Public Safety, which is responsible for the center's day-to-day operations.

“This recognition by Gartner is most welcome and appreciated. It provides us even greater confidence and motivation as we continue to aggressively work toward advancing our technology and the general state of search and text analytics solutions in the marketplace,” said Kirk Dauksavage, RiverGlass CEO.

RiverGlass’ unique linguistic, meaning-based approach to information collection and analysis empowers users to go beyond the limitations and frustrations of keyword and statistical search methods. By understanding actual relationships within the text, results of queries can be extended to those terms not explicitly appearing in the query while still maintaining a higher degree of relevance – saving users from needing ‘to already know what it is they are looking to find’ as well as eliminating a multitude of queries, each tweaked to cover any possible number and combination of search terms. Once the relevant information is located, the results are stored as discrete events (with each linked to multiple documents referencing that unique event) with associated people, places and dates of interest. These results can be combined with other data sources and types within the enterprise (such as customer databases or SFA systems) and jointly reported using existing BI, portal and data mining tools and infrastructure.

About Gartner’s Cool Vendors Selection Process

Gartner’s listing does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness of a particular purpose.

Gartner defines a Cool Vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are:

• Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn’t do before;
• Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology);
• Intriguing, have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.

About RiverGlass

RiverGlass, Inc. (www.riverglassinc.com) is a leading provider of intelligent information search, collection and analysis solutions. The company was formed in 2003 to commercialize eight years of grant-funded research at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. RiverGlass provides application solutions to government agencies and commands in defense; intelligence; law enforcement; and major corporations. RiverGlass is a private company with principal offices in West Chicago, Illinois and Champaign, Illinois.

The development of the RiverGlass technologies was funded in part through a grant by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

Contact

Pete Carroll
RiverGlass, Inc.
630.578.4268
pcarroll@riverglassinc.com