FTI Consulting, Inc today announced that its FTI Technology business segment has launched the enhanced Ringtail Analytics module for the market-leading Ringtail e-discovery platform.

The updated offering includes the popular clustering and visual review capabilities of Document Mapper as well as two components, Smart Decision and Concept Mapper, designed to assist in early case assessments (ECA), keyword testing and the faster creation of review assignments. In total, the expanded Ringtail Analytics module provides powerful data analytics and visual review tools that together dramatically increase the productivity and efficiency of legal review.

“Ringtail Analytics has produced tangible productivity gains for our review teams and we expect it will provide substantial cost savings to our clients moving forward,” said Danny Chan, eDiscovery/litigation support project manager of Bereskin & Parr LLP. “As data volumes grow, linear review technology becomes inefficient. Fortunately, Ringtail Analytics lets us smartly cut through the data, understand key concepts and review relevant documents faster and more effectively.”  

Ringtail Analytics is comprised of three complementary components:

•    Smart Decision: Smart Decision helps clients rapidly test and sample keywords across millions of documents while also providing advanced whole-case reporting and familiar pivot table capabilities to track project status and review metrics.
•    Concept Mapper: Concept Mapper organizes large-scale document collections by key concepts and concept frequency into a simple and easy-to-use dashboard. Using Concept Mapper, legal teams can quickly build assignments based on specific themes then route to the Ringtail review workflow which ensures that the most important documents will be reviewed first.
•    Document Mapper: The Document Mapper review interface is an integrated component of the Ringtail Analytics module and can be used at any stage of the e-discovery or review process, including for early case assessments, investigations, preparing for depositions or for quality control of reviewed documents.

“In a recent study, 39 percent of Fortune 1000 inside counsel respondents said they are using visualization and clustering tools to speed the review process,” said Ed Pfromer, senior managing director, FTI Technology. “This number is likely to grow as legal teams realize that linear review is no longer an adequate solution for e-discovery volumes and court-defined deadlines. We were an early innovator in visualization and clustering for e-discovery, and with this enhanced release, Ringtail Analytics further refines the user experience and greatly expands the reach of these critical technologies to encompass larger data sets and more use cases than ever before.”

Through its comprehensive portfolio of e-discovery software, services and consulting, FTI Technology is transforming the way corporations and their law firms globally manage e-discovery for legal and regulatory events. Through offerings such as FTI Acuity, FTI Technology’s e-discovery services and consulting help streamline the entire e-discovery process and can provide clients a single point of e-discovery accountability. The comprehensive portfolio of FTI Technology software, including Attenex and Ringtail, delivers advanced technology for the most mission-critical and costly steps of e-discovery. FTI Technology’s e-discovery software can be deployed either on-premise or on-demand as a hosted solution, a hybrid capability that helps clients scale to the unique demands of each legal matter without sacrificing a consistent and cost-effective e-discovery process. Altogether, FTI Technology provides a smart and comprehensive approach to improve the e-discovery process, contain costs without cutting corners, and manage client’s critical enterprise information demands.

FTI Consulting today announced that its FTI Technology segment is launching a new version of Ringtail Legal that provides significant advancements in the speed, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of e-discovery and document review. Less than a year after the acquisition of Attenex, the company has integrated two market-leading and award-winning applications to deliver a single e-discovery system of record, combining the visual analysis and rapid review capabilities of Attenex with the enterprise-class case management, redaction and production features of Ringtail Legal.

"The launch of this new version of Ringtail Legal demonstrates FTI's in-depth knowledge of the e-discovery process, and signals that it is serious about serving the most pressing needs of corporations," said Vivian Tero, Program Manager, Compliance Infrastructure, with IDC.

The fully integrated review, analysis, redaction and production capabilities of Ringtail Legal enable an enhanced and streamlined workflow, all on one platform. Using the software, e-discovery teams at corporations, law firms or service providers can take very large data sets, run sophisticated search queries, and then create secure, focused assignments or "batches" for reviewers. Assignments, which can consist of hundreds or thousands of documents, can be quickly reviewed using patented Attenex clustering and visualization software. Legal review is the most expensive portion of e-discovery, comprising up to 80% of the e-discovery costs. The addition of Attenex software speeds review by using content analytics to assess the data's subject matter, and then clusters the information in visual representations based on the semantic, social and time relationships of the content. This allows legal teams to quickly and thoroughly parse through mountains of data to find the relevant documents and quickly mark and tag them for relevance and/or privilege without relying solely on keyword searches. Markings can be preserved for future matters, or used to help orient reviewers to incoming documents as matters grow in size and complexity. Reviewers can highlight and redact documents in preparation for future document productions. E-discovery project managers can then lock and manage productions for legal counsel.

"Combining the advanced analysis and rapid review capabilities of Attenex with the enterprise-class case management capabilities of Ringtail Legal completely changes the game in e-discovery and document review," said David Remnitz, senior managing director and segment leader of FTI Technology. "Our clients will immediately benefit from the integration of two proven and market-leading products, resulting in greater efficiencies from processing through production. We're extremely proud of this offering and of our team's ability to deliver it so quickly after the acquisition of Attenex."

Since FTI began offering Attenex Patterns software to its clients as a complement to Ringtail in 2004, the Attenex and Ringtail software suites have been used together on numerous high-profile and critical e-discovery projects -- including internal investigations, case assessment, regulatory investigations, litigation and joint defense, as well as antitrust and competition investigations, including Hart Scott Rodino (HSR) "second requests." The latest release of Ringtail Legal delivers the rapid review capabilities of Attenex with the enterprise-grade scale and security of Ringtail Legal without the need to move critical data between applications during legal review. Additionally, the latest release provides:

• Fully integrated visual analysis, review, redaction and production capabilities: Data can be hosted for review and managed easily in one application;
• Security: Ringtail Legal restricts document and field access based on reviewers' user group memberships, providing project managers with the fine-grain control needed for sensitive investigations and complex litigation;
• Flexibility: Users have unlimited flexibility in how and where they review data. Ringtail Legal is available as an on-demand tool through FTI and FTI partners as well as an on-premise software suite, providing budget-minded corporate legal departments with the choice of how and where the system is maintained, while enabling in-house or outsourced teams to review document assignments in a single, secure application;
• Rapid understanding of data: Ringtail Legal combines advanced and multi-faceted search capabilities with Attenex visual analytics so that reviewers can more rapidly get a deeper understanding of the data. Legal teams can visualize document relationships both pre- and post-assignment creation to jump-start investigations as well as subsequent phases of review. Additionally, once the data is reviewed and tagged, the markings can be re-used in future matters, saving additional time and costs;
• Smarter assignment creation: The software provides more than 20 types of search criteria as well as batch assignment creation so that project managers can more easily delegate and oversee review;
• Increased confidence in the completeness of the review: Ringtail Legal allows review teams to quickly explore documents left unmarked or marked irrelevant, ensuring that no vital documents are left out of the matter;
• Customizable for each phase of review: Whether using Ringtail Legal for an early case assessment, first pass review, privileged materials review or a custom project review workflow, the software can be configured to meet client's changing requirements. Each phase of review can be streamlined for maximum flexibility and optimal understanding of the document set;
• Scalability: The Ringtail Legal database is massively scalable and can support matters involving multiple terabytes (TBs) of data.

Unified brand for Software, Consulting and Services to Meet Growing Market Need

Recent surveys show that Fortune 1000 corporations are managing, on average, over 500 legal and regulatory matters at any one time. The scope of these matters can range from smaller investigations involving a few gigabytes of data to large-scale "bet-the-company" types of cases in which hundreds of terabytes of data are collected for review as possible evidence. Often, companies are simply trying to find the easiest, most cost-effective and defensible processes and tools in which to secure the best possible outcome without disrupting the companies' core businesses.

To help companies and their law firms meet these challenges, FTI has assembled its leading e-discovery software, services and consulting under one unified brand of FTI Technology. The FTI Technology segment, consisting of over 600 employees around the globe, offers on-premise and on-demand e-discovery software as well as complementary services and consulting to give customers unprecedented flexibility to address e-discovery challenges at any stage of the process. The legacy knowledge and unparalleled R&D investment that FTI Technology has focused on e-discovery uniquely positions the company to capture a large share of the e-discovery software market, which Gartner Research estimates will grow between 25% and 35% per year until 2012. Gartner Research recently named FTI Technology as a "strong positive" in the 2008 MarketScope for E-Discovery Vendors report, one of only four vendors named in the highest category and the only one to offer software, consulting and services that span the entire e-discovery process.

The new Ringtail Legal software will be available for Ringtail on-demand customers in Q2 and for on-premise customers in Q3. For more information on Ringtail Legal and our other Ringtail software products, and how FTI Technology can help corporations and law firms address today's e-discovery challenges, please visit www.fticonsulting.com/technology.