Every year I attend the RelFest (formerly Relativity Fest) user conference in Chicago. I have been attending this conference since 2011 as either an employee of Relativity (formerly kCura) or a client of Relativity. I am pretty sure that I have only missed two of these; the first two ever, predating my entrance into the eDiscovery industry.
Some history…
The conference has been held in several locations in Chicago and has gradually outgrown them. Nowadays it has been hosted at the Hyatt Regency for the last few years. In the past it has been hosted at the historic and iconic Hilton and Palmer House hotels. The social event (e.g. the party) has been held in many different places too. The Art Institute, Museum of Science and Industry, Field Museum, House of Blues, Union Station, and The Old Post Office have all been host to the RelFest social event. In the past attendees were offered a list of uniquely Chicagoan things do during one of the evenings; things like a Second City comedy show, an architecture boat tour, or deep dish pizza making classes.
The conference is meant to showcase the Relativity platform and its add-on capabilities, as well as provide Relativity’s partners with a forum to display what they’re offering in terms of third-party applications that integrate into the platform. In the past, this was also a place for hosting provider partners of Relativity to pitch their services to prospective clients, though with Relativity now being in direct competition with their hosting providers there seems to be a smaller hosting provider presence each year.
The present…
The conference itself has changed a lot over the years. Before Relativity began hosting their own application, there were quite a few sessions for things like SQL Server tuning, optimal component server configurations, etc. but these things are not on offer anymore since Relativity intends to phase out their on-premises offering by the end of next year. There is in fact very little mention of the “Relativity Server” product, which is what the on-premises offering of the platform has come to be called in recent years. I don’t think there was a single session about it this year. This year’s conference was almost completely dedicated to AI.
Relativity has gone “all in” on AI, plugging the technology into all of the most obvious places within the EDRM in the last couple of years. Reportedly the adoption rate for these new features has increased by a double-digit percentage year over year. I can’t really speak to how much my employer’s clients use it, as I work almost primarily in the on-premises side of the business and don’t have visibility into that. I can say that there are many, many other companies already providing or planning to provide some AI enabled capabilities for Relativity, and not just in the document review space.
It’s easy to see how AI lends itself very well to things like document review and I understand why litigators and companies that provide document review services find the marriage of eDiscovery and AI to be very exciting. Relativity is the market leader in the eDiscovery software space, and they have historically done a great job at seamlessly integrating new capabilities into their platform, while also being ahead of the curve in doing so.