Credit: Blackboard/Shutterstock.com

When it comes to data analysis and document review, everyone seems to be searching for the next big thing.

And international law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner believes it has that thing: a combined e-discovery and consulting service that could help in-house lawyers make more informed choices about whether to settle or forge ahead with litigation. 

The firm announced this week that it had launched Clear/Cut, a tech-based e-discovery and consulting service that is aimed at the in-house crowd. It's only available in the United Kingdom at the moment, but could be coming stateside soon.

➤➤ Want to read more about how new tech is changing the legal profession? Sign up for What's Next, a weekly briefing on the future of law.

According to the firm, Clear/Cut leverages new technologies to comb through massive amounts of data and pluck out key information for the firm's legal analysts, who use it to recommend the best course of action. 

Corporate Counsel spoke with Bryan Cave's Nick Pryor, the firm's London-based innovations solutions director, about the service, which he believes “will help in-house counsel make more confident decisions on how to respond to disputes and investigations.”   

What it is: Clear/Cut is an “innovative dispute evaluation service” that relies on machine learning and predictive coding and can be deployed during the initial stages of a case or investigation to evaluate the potential risks that lie ahead, according to Bryan Cave.

In a trademark application filed in August, the firm described Clear/Cut, in part, as “legal consulting featuring the use of analytic and statistic models for understanding and predictive modeling of legal issues, legal trends and actions.”

But it's not just about the technology, Pryor said. He stressed that the firm's tech gurus “train” the machine learning to be more efficient and effective, which helps the firm's lawyers make more targeted and effective recommendations to clients about how they should proceed. 

“It's having a smarter way to maximize the utility of those tools,” Pryor added. “It's not, 'Here's a shiny new tech tool.' It's an extraction of the relevant data points, and here's our analysis on top of that.”

Why is it needed? The service allows for a “more extensive review across datasets that would be prohibitively large and costly to evaluate with human-led document review,” according to the firm.

It's also a response to client demand for quick turnarounds on data analysis complete with concise reports that make sense of the findings and outline clear paths forward. Pryor said: “We're really trying to hold lawyers' feet to the fire in trying to produce a succinct and robust set of recommendations.”

Bryan Cave began testing the service earlier this year in the U.K. with about 15 clients, including one on the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index, and the feedback has been promising,  Pryor said. 

“We're working on having a fixed fee,” he added. “It will be very competitive.”

Competition: Pryor was unaware of any direct competition from other law firms that offer similar data analysis and consulting services in a single package, at least not in the U.K. But there are plenty of companies that specialize in e-discovery services, and those services seem to be getting more tailored to client needs. A few weeks ago, for instance, a new e-discovery company called Hanzo announced that it was using artificial intelligence to scour for social media posts, including hidden ones, to gather data for litigation.