For many, the cloud has moved past the stage of mystery and wonder to become a normal, routine part of everyday business. That's certainly true in e-discovery, where companies like Relativity have been encouraging a move to its RelativityOne cloud platform since it was introduced in early 2017 to the public.

Now, one of Relativity's biggest partners has taken the plunge. On March 27, leading professional services firm BDO USA announced that it would be expanding its partnership with Relativity to include support for RelativityOne in its services portfolio. The move is a natural extension for BDO, with it having received Relativity's Best in Service designation in the U.S. for three straight years, and the firm's employees including three professionals who have obtained Relativity Master status.

George Socha, co-founder of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) and now managing director in BDO's Forensic Technology Services practice, told Legaltech News that BDO had been looking at RelativityOne since its introduction, but felt now was the time to expand its portfolio.

Pointing specifically to greater flexibility as a major ask for today's organizations, he added, “As corporations are increasingly using and accepting cloud-based solutions as part of their infrastructure strategies, this partnership allows us to align strategically with corporate clients in an environment they are comfortable in. Meanwhile, seamless integration to our tools streamlines the process of embracing the cloud.”

David Horrigan, Relativity's discovery counsel and legal education director, echoed this sentiment, adding that he viewed the partnership as part of a larger change in how the e-discovery industry interacts with the cloud.

“As a traditionalist profession and industry, legal hasn't always embraced emerging technologies, but SaaS [software as a service] is no longer an emerging technology, and the legal industry is no longer shy about deploying it,” Horrigan said. “Lawyers were hesitant initially about the cloud, but that's changing rapidly, and when you see a major international professional services firm such as BDO adopt RelativityOne, you know the legal embrace of the cloud is real. We anticipate that, in the very near future, most e-discovery practice will take place in the cloud.”

Indeed, the cloud has grown in importance for e-discovery experts in recent years. In the 2017 LTN Law Firm Tech Survey, 55 percent indicated that their firms were using the cloud for e-discovery, with 63 percent calling their overall cloud usage a “positive” or “somewhat positive” experience.

And for his part, Socha believes there is a day where the majority of discovery will be cloud-based. “The issue is not whether, but when,” Socha said. “Specifically, e-discovery in the cloud is growing in two ways, neither of which we expect will slow down anytime soon. First, we anticipate that using cloud capabilities to work with ESI [electronically stored information] will grow quickly as more organizations turn to RelativityOne and other cloud-based e-discovery tools.  Second, as more ESI is stored in the cloud—think Office 365, for example—there will be an increasing need to go to the cloud to get ESI.”