eDiscovery is a labor-intensive process with tight timelines and mountains of electronic data. As a result, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a critical tool for driving efficiency. To prepare you for 2025 and beyond, we explore four trends that are set to redefine eDiscovery.
The eDiscovery industry is no stranger to AI. For years, law firms and legal service providers have used AI-driven solutions to manage, review and analyze massive volumes of electronically stored information (ESI). This has resulted in streamlined workflows and cut costs.
However, AI will play an even more critical role in 2025 as organizations face increasing workloads and escalating volumes of ESI. As data sources become more diversified and complex, ESI management will require advanced AI solutions to ensure efficient processing, organization and analysis.
The good news is that AI is continuously evolving and is poised to reshape eDiscovery even further.
How AI Is Changing eDiscovery
Traditional eDiscovery involved manual processes to gather, review and produce electronic documents for legal proceedings. This often required significant time and resources to sort through vast amounts of data, making it a slow and costly process.
AI is transforming the way law firms and legal service providers approach eDiscovery:
- Automating repetitive tasks: Organizations are using AI to automate repetitive tasks, such as identifying relevant documents and applying predictive coding. These advancements speed up the review process while improving accuracy and reducing expenses.
- Managing large volumes of ESI: The exponential growth of ESI on platforms like Google Drive, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint is making it more challenging for eDiscovery professionals to collect, preserve and analyze dynamic data manually. AI allows legal teams to sift through vast datasets and flag pertinent information.
- Innovative tools for dynamic data: New AI-powered tools are emerging to address the complexity of dynamic data. These solutions help legal teams adapt while maintaining compliance and efficiency.
By embracing AI, eDiscovery teams can navigate the increasing complexity of information today and position themselves to capitalize on emerging trends and advancements shaping the future of eDiscovery in 2025.
4 Key AI Trends for eDiscovery in 2025
2025 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for eDiscovery as AI continues to drive innovation and efficiency. Here’s a look at four AI trends you need to know.
1. Automation
Automation is a fundamental element of modern eDiscovery, and its influence is expected to grow even more in 2025. By utilizing AI and machine learning, legal teams can process vast datasets with remarkable speed and accuracy.
AI significantly accelerates the document review process, enabling teams to quickly identify pertinent documents and minimize time spent on manual tasks. As a result, workflows become more efficient, allowing teams to focus on strategic aspects of the case instead of getting bogged down by administrative work.
In addition to speeding up the document review process, advanced AI-powered automation tools enhance the quality of the discovery process by providing deeper insights through early case management. These advanced tools can analyze large datasets, identify patterns and assess potential risks that might otherwise go unnoticed.
By uncovering patterns early on, AI speeds up the review process and offers strategic guidance that can help shape case strategy from the outset.
2. Predictive Coding
As the amount of data involved in litigation continues to grow, manual document review becomes increasingly time-consuming and prone to errors. Predictive coding addresses this challenge by leveraging advanced AI algorithms to analyze and categorize documents based on patterns and relevance. These algorithms identify and prioritize key documents for review, dramatically reducing the number of documents that need to be manually assessed. This streamlines the review process while ensuring that legal teams focus their time and energy on the most critical information.
One of predictive coding’s most significant advantages is its continuous learning capability. The AI system refines its understanding and improves accuracy the more data it processes. This continuous feedback loop allows the system to adapt to the nuances of each case, improving its ability to identify relevant documents with minimal human intervention. The result is a more efficient, error-free review process that can handle even the most complex and voluminous datasets.
AI-driven predictive coding is also adaptable and can be tailored to meet the specific needs of different industries, legal practices and case types. Whether dealing with intellectual property disputes, financial investigations or regulatory compliance cases, predictive coding can be customized to align with the particular demands of each situation.
Finally, AI-powered predictive coding solutions offer greater transparency and defensibility in the eDiscovery process. Legal teams can generate detailed reports that clearly document the methods used to identify and prioritize documents, helping to ensure compliance with legal standards. This transparency mitigates potential disputes over document handling and coding decisions, which can be particularly important in cases where the integrity of the eDiscovery process is challenged.
3. Natural Language Processing
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is transforming eDiscovery by providing smarter, context-aware tools for document review. It enhances search accuracy by interpreting legal terminology, slang and context to ensure precise results even when phrasing varies.
Unlike traditional keyword-based searches, NLP enables semantic search, which understands meaning and uncovers hidden relationships and evidence. Additionally, NLP automatically groups related documents, helping teams prioritize critical information. It also offers deeper insights into sentiment, intent, and key themes within documents, aiding in case strategy development.
4. Generative AI
Finally, generative AI is revolutionizing eDiscovery by automating complex and time-consuming tasks while significantly enhancing data analysis. One key benefit of generative AI is its ability to quickly summarize large volumes of legal documents, deposition transcripts and evidence. This automation allows legal teams to focus their efforts on high-priority issues, such as case strategy and critical decision-making, rather than getting bogged down by routine tasks like document summarization.
Generative AI also helps ensure regulatory compliance by automating the creation of reports tailored to specific legal frameworks, such as GDPR and CCPA. This saves legal teams significant time and reduces the risk of human error, ensuring compliance-related tasks are handled accurately and consistently.
In addition, generative AI enhances search capabilities within eDiscovery platforms by generating natural language queries that go beyond traditional keyword-based searches. These AI-generated queries can uncover hidden connections, identify risks and reveal patterns within large datasets that might not be apparent.
How Can Legal Teams Prepare for the Future of AI in eDiscovery?
AI will redefine how legal teams approach eDiscovery in 2025 and beyond. As AI continues to change eDiscovery, legal teams should adopt a proactive approach to ensure they are ready to leverage these advancements responsibly and effectively:
- Understand strengths and limitations: Legal professionals should familiarize themselves with AI tools’ capabilities and boundaries to ensure they are applied appropriately.
- Invest in training: Ongoing education and training are essential to equip teams with the knowledge to confidently navigate AI-powered tools.
- Prioritize data governance: Transparency, accountability and strict adherence to data privacy regulations are crucial when implementing AI solutions in eDiscovery.
To stay ahead of the curve, consider incorporating automation, predictive coding, natural language processing and generative AI into your workflows. Embracing these technologies will improve efficiency and empower your team to tackle increasingly complex cases with greater speed and accuracy.
iCONECT is cutting-edge eDiscovery software that puts AI in the right places for greater efficiency and accuracy. Request a personalized demo to see how iCONECT’s AI features—from email threading to technology assistance review (TAR)—can enhance your workflow.
