Evolution and Innovation
David Cochran
EVP, Head of Legal Services
Iota Analytics
With nearly four decades in the legal technology and services industry, I’ve had the opportunity to witness—and contribute to—tremendous evolution and innovation.
I began my career in the mid‑1980s in the legal discovery business as a paper-based document coder. At that time, we read hardcopy documents and entered key information onto paper coding forms, which were then sent to the Caribbean for “key/key verification”. The data was later returned to the U.S. on tapes and loaded onto mainframe platforms like BASIS and BRS-Search for text-based search and retrieval—long before images were part of the workflow. Law firms ran searches on these systems to identify documents of interest, and staff would physically retrieve the corresponding hardcopy from a library for review. As you can imagine, it was an extremely labor-intensive manual process, but at the time, it represented the “cutting edge” of legal technology.
Technology has always been a driving force in the legal industry, and service providers continually pushed to make tools and processes smarter, faster, and more efficient. Law firms wanted exactly that—quicker access to data, less to review, and faster turnaround times. eDiscovery rose to meet those expectations, introducing major advances such as the EDRM model, early case assessment, and TAR/CAL, all of which reshaped how legal teams manage and analyze information.
AI continues to drive the next wave of evolution in legal technology, enabling teams to analyze larger data volumes while still meeting the market’s expectations for speed, accuracy, and cost efficiency. As adoption grows, these models will face increasing pressure to deliver high quality, reliable results across matters such as litigation, investigations, and cyber incident response. Unlike traditional software, generative AI is probabilistic and can vary in its outputs. One thing remains constant: people and process are the foundation. We are not installing a fixed tool, but working with a system that improves over time through informed use.
No matter how advanced technology becomes, human involvement is essential to apply context and ensure the work product meets professional and legal standards. Technology accelerates the process, but it cannot replace the judgment, discipline, and quality control that skilled experts provide.
At Iota Analytics, we are applying that thinking through a governed, GenAI-assisted managed review model developed with Discernis—pairing AI-driven scale with lawyer-led oversight and structured quality control.
If this is an area you are exploring, please reach out to at info@iotaanalytics.com. We would be glad to continue the discussion and provide a brief demonstration of our approach.
