Everything becomes more scalable in the cloud without worrying about hardware limitations or high costs of unexpected IT expenses, maintenance, repairs or upgrades. Data is never out of reach, as you can access your data from anywhere, at any time, and on any device in real-time. Cloud computing is more secure than on-premises solutions, where you take advantage of the latest security features and technologies, and knowing your data is backed up in secure data centers.

Whether it’s prioritizing documents to review by leveraging predictive coding, or assigning documents out to multiple people to review, legal teams will increasingly be relying on automated technology to speed up cumbersome processes. The increase has been seen in certain workflows, like redactions, and this is expected to continue going forward.

Recorded video conference calls are discoverable evidence. Automated transcription will become crucial for parsing through audio/video data. Also, the need to collect, process, review, and produce structured mobile device/app, chat, and message data types will accelerate as data volumes increase in size.

More companies will be consuming cloud SaaS (software-as-a-service) platforms (e.g. Salesforce, Google Workspace, Box, DocuSign) to help solve business problems. This will result in more discoverable data, and legal teams will need an efficient way to review data and information from these cloud services. E-discovery vendors will need to keep pace with the new file types and provide a way to easily upload and view these unusual file types.

Remote depositions, hearings, and trials are here to stay. Fewer lawyers will be traveling to hearings and motions, and more legal work will be done virtually, as has already been the case. Collaborative features like real-time editing and secure sharing of documents must be part of any e-discovery software platform. This evolving work style will be pervasive by the end of the next year.