Rollout of enterprise software sets new standard for large-scale electronic discovery and litigation document management

July 6, 2011 — NEW YORK – LexisNexis® (www.lexisnexis.com), a leading global provider of content-enabled workflow solutions, today announced the release of Concordance® Evolution, a powerful new enterprise software product for electronic discovery and litigation document management.

Developed with the help and collaborative input from litigation professionals through hundreds of interviews and extensive user testing, Concordance Evolution from LexisNexis is an innovative and user-friendly offering that helps legal professionals reduce their overall e-discovery cost and boost their litigation workflow productivity while managing the largest and most complex cases.

"Today's litigation teams need software to do more, and that’s why we completely reinvented Concordance from the ground up," said Deborah Jillson, vice president of Litigation Tools at LexisNexis. "The combination of easy to use Web controls, open architecture and innovative features in Concordance Evolution sets a new standard for document management software in the legal space, and helps users generate better outcomes for their practice and their clients."

Concordance Evolution features an all-new online interface and delivers the most requested and needed features for customers – including virtually limitless scalability, centralized user administration, native file review, integrated processing and production, concept searching and email threading – while also retaining tools from the traditional Concordance product. The new solution also gives users the ability to host the platform in an "agnostic" software environment so it can work alongside other products and provide users the flexibility to purchase only those pieces that best suit their unique needs.

Key features of Concordance Evolution include:

  • Open Web API – Concordance Evolution is built on an open Web API architecture that enables users or third party partners to create their own specialized applications and integrations that work with Concordance Evolution – a capability that competitive offerings in the space do not have.
  • Concept Search & Clustering – Considered a best practice in today’s litigation environment, Concordance Evolution customers benefit from unlimited access to concept search and clustering for no additional charge. This differs from most providers and helps users address budget issues, which is a top concern about the data management process cited by lawyers, according to 2011 LexisNexis research. The feature is integrated into Concordance Evolution and requires no separate processing or steps , saving users time by improving efficiency.
  • Near-Native Redaction – Concordance Evolution offers near-native redaction that allows clients to not only see the native version of their document, but to safely redact it – saving the time and cost of converting original documents to Tiff or PDF files before redacting, while also avoiding the risk of redacting original files. With more than half of lawyers identifying the review phase of e-discovery as the most costly and time-intensive phase, according to a 2011 nationwide survey by Harris Interactive® on behalf of LexisNexis, the near-native redaction feature helps users save valuable time.
  • Find and Redact – Concordance Evolution has a unique find-and-redact feature that enables users to easily search for and redact a common term or phrase within a document. Rather than rely on a reviewer’s naked eye to find every occurrence of a confidential term and manually redacting it, with one search Concordance Evolution will find every instance of the term or phrase and redact it. This provides extra protections to clients and saves significant review time, reducing overall costs.
  • Centralized Database – A centralized database and security management function inside Concordance Evolution enables firm administrators to have oversight of all firm databases from a single dashboard. By offering one view of discovery, users don’t waste time importing and exporting files or dealing with technology integration challenges.

Concordance Evolution is available with a base cost for the software and then a per-seat licensing fee. More information is available at http://www.lexisnexis.com/concordance-evolution/.

"The launch of Concordance Evolution represents a major step forward in our strategy of providing our customers with the best set of product choices to fit the size of their case," said Jillson. "For example, while Concordance Evolution is new enterprise software for large-scale litigation from LexisNexis, we continue to invest in the development of our traditional Concordance product so that it remains well-suited for small to mid-sized litigation."

Next month LexisNexis plans to introduce a new "Native Viewer" functionality in its traditional Concordance software product that will allow users to view documents in their "native" state and avoid the costs associated with converting them to images.

About LexisNexis
LexisNexis® (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leading global provider of content-enabled workflow solutions designed specifically for professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting, and academic markets. LexisNexis originally pioneered online information with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. A member of Reed Elsevier [NYSE: ENL; NYSE: RUK] (www.reedelsevier.com), LexisNexis serves customers in more than 100 countries with 15,000 employees worldwide.