Electronic Discovery

Ayfie is fully stepping into the e-discovery fold with its newest program, ayfie Accelerator. Accelerator leverages linguistic-based text analysis and machine learning to grasp the contexts and concepts within documents, categorize terms and deliver it an easy to digest format.

What it is: Ayfie's Accelerator is an e-discovery and contract review platform and the latest addition to ayfie's software suite, which includes programs that help practitioners analyze text, index content, and identify sensitive data like personally identifiable information.

How it works: Accelerator users can utilize conceptual searches as a way to find documents with similar concepts and traits. The searches work by either entering keywords or uploading entire document, which the program reviews to find similar additional documents.

Users are also able to use supervised and unsupervised conceptual clustering within the e-discovery platform. With supervised conceptual clustering, users must fill in what categories their document is about to help train the system to find conceptually similar documents. In unsupervised conceptual clustering, users forgo predefining categories, and the machine is left to determine the categories on its own.

In addition, Accelerator also offers email threading and a number of data visualization tools to help users “evaluate complex datasets under time pressure,” according to a press release provided by ayfie.

There are also collaborative features offered within Accelerator that allow users to see who is working on a specific project, assign other users to specific projects, and leave annotations on documents.

A GDPR Focus: Given that Accelerator allows users to search for personally identifiable information in the data they collect and review, ayfie is quick to stress that its e-discovery tool can be an asset when it comes to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance efforts.

“When you talk to people about it [the GDPR], they tend to believe they have control of the CRM, they have control of their compliance,” said said Johannes Stiehler, chief technology officer of ayfie. He added, “The sad truth is that GDPR pertains to all data… it pertains to your email box, your Dropbox.”

Given that users of the e-discovery platform may be handling sensitive information, Stiehler noted that ayfie designed Accelerator to make sure all data handled within the system is encrypted and can only be accessed with proper credentials.

Competition: Stiehler said any provider of document review is a competitor for ayfie Accelarator. These can include e-discovery platforms offered by Catalyst, Exterro, QDiscovery, and Relativity, among many others.

Stiehler, however, noted ayfie also works together with many e-discovery providers. According to ayfie's website, for instance, it's “Inspector” text analytics engine can power workflows within Relativity's e-discovery platform.