Purpose Legal Slashes Thousands of Hours to Beat Impossible Deadline with Relativity aiR for Review

This article originally appeared on Relativity’s website
How did we do it?
- Completed a 300,000+ document review project within one week to meet a rigid court production deadline.
- Leveraged only a single firm partner for subject matter expertise and prompt iteration.
- Used Relativity aiR for Review’s issues analysis to identify documents responsive to 10 key issues – resulting in an 85% reduction in project time.
- Delivered cost savings of $70,000+, slashed 4,000 hours of review, and achieved 95% recall – all with one solution.
An Unsolvable Problem
When a law firm took over as new counsel on a matter, the courts rejected a push on the production deadline to accommodate their late arrival. This left the firm in an impossible predicament: they had to review 300,000+ documents in a single week.
Production had already been delayed, and any further delays would result in sanctions. There was neither time nor budget to ramp up an associate or review team. It quickly became clear that the firm could not possibly review the enormous volume of documents and still meet the deadline without additional tools.
Adding to the challenge, the production required RFP correlation for every produced document—a task that demanded issue-level tagging and context. So, with critical minutes ticking away, the law firm brought in Relativity partner Purpose Legal to solve their problem with the generative AI power of Relativity aiR for Review.
Purpose Legal: A Leader in Generative AI for e-Discovery
A long-term provider of Relativity Server and RelativityOne, Purpose Legal is a leader in the development of generative AI-powered e-discovery workflows. These efforts are helmed by Jeff Johnson, Chief Innovation Officer, whose primary focus is accelerating adoption of generative AI, e-discovery, and analytics.
Purpose has demonstrated the real-world application and benefits of generative AI in legal for two years, with client adoption growing significantly over the last 12 months. They leverage Relativity aiR for Review for a multitude of use cases, including reviews for production and issues analysis for RFP bucketing – showcasing the transformative capabilities of generative AI.
Making the Impossible Possible with aiR for Review
Against a relentlessly ticking clock, the team needed to complete the complex issues review, fast. Had they relied on a traditional Active Learning / TAR 2.0 workflow, the process would have required engaging, training, and managing a contract review. It would have taken multiple weeks and demanded thousands of review hours. They never would have made the court-mandated deadline.
aiR for Review provided a clear solution for the law firm’s predicament. Working directly with a partner/SME at the law firm on prompt iteration, the Purpose Team used aiR to run an issues review – aided in part by a member of the firm’s litigation support team.
The prompting process was a collaborative effort. The team began by running their initial prompt on a stratified sample of less than 500 documents. They used the rationales and considerations aiR for Review provided in each of its coding predictions to improve their prompt – successfully refining it after only three iterations.
This built confidence in their 10 identified issues before they ran aiR for Review on the larger document population. To ensure the product was running as expected, Purpose conducted small sets of random QC.
Beating the Clock with Valid, Defensible Results
To confirm the accuracy of aiR for Review’s output, the team validated the results, relying on appropriately sized random precision and elusion samples pulled from the documents aiR for Review classified as “relevant” and “not relevant”, respectively. In validation, the team’s primary focus was overall review (and ultimately production/privilege log) recall, as opposed to an issue-by-issue validation. The team considered any document that aiR predicted “relevant” to have at least one issue as “relevant”. Conversely, the validation process considered documents that aiR predicted “not relevant” for ALL of the analysis issues to be the “not relevant” classification set.
Validation substantiated aiR for Review’s power. The ending elusion sample demonstrated recall above 95%, significantly higher than manual review.
aiR for Review Gives Legal Teams Hours Out of Minutes
Bolstered by the speed and accuracy of aiR for Review, Purpose was able to complete the review on time. Over 300,000 documents were reviewed in just seven days, using only one project manager and a law firm partner to provide subject matter expertise.
Faced with an aggressive deadline and limited budget, aiR for Review allowed the firm to easily complete the review with a skeleton team – reducing review time by 85%, or 4,000 hours.
This resulted in cost savings of over $70,000 for the law firm, who were thrilled with how aiR for Review let them breathe easy in a tough spot.
“aiR for Review helped us, and our client, meet demands that otherwise would have been impossible to meet. Our client is convinced and spreading the word. We are supporting a steady stream of aiR reviews, from a growing number of case teams, within the firm.”
Jeff Johnson, Chief Innovation Officer, Purpose Legal
A Commitment to AI Innovation
Purpose Legal’s aiR for Review win appends their already impressive list of success stories with the product. The more they utilize aiR for Review across projects of any size or type, the more robust and pivotal its value becomes.
“Purpose Legal is committed to expanding the use of Relativity aiR within the workflows and services we provide our clients,” says Jeff. “We are convinced that these tools, properly integrated with our expert team members and clients, cost-effectively provide improved results.”
As more organizations see their legal operations measurably transformed with generative AI, Purpose’s sharpening expertise with Relativity aiR promises even more expansive, innovative, and defensible applications of the technology.
Relativity aiR’s aptitude for tackling tough data challenges demonstrates that, despite appearances, no challenge is impossible when a team wields the right tools.
“Driven by our team and collaborative process, Relativity aiR delivers better outcomes – efficiently and cost-effectively. Purpose Legal is dedicated to the utilization of these tools in the workflows and services we deliver.”
Jeff Johnson, Chief Innovation Officer, Purpose Legal