Clearwell Extends E-Discovery Platform

E-mail analytics vendor Clearwell Systems on Feb. 6 released a new version of its enterprise software platform that expands its scope from databases to include documents residing on user desktops and on file shares.

Clearwell Intelligence Platform 2.0 provides legal and forensics professionals with early case assessment, cull-down and review capabilities, speeding up early case assessment and reducing analysis costs by more than 60 percent on average, a company spokesperson said.

Clearwell Intelligence Platform 2.0 is a 2U, rack-mountable appliance that can be operational within 30 minutes. In addition to comprehensive document support, version 2.0 includes more than 40 new features and enhancements, including advanced auto-filters, multiple review modes, automated smart-tagging, stemmed and literal search, domain search, proximity search, and case analytics, the spokesperson said.

Resource Library:

Clearwell provides a single interface to one or more repositories: Microsoft Exchange, PST files, third-party archives and file systems. It can be configured to perform nightly incremental crawls so that it remains current with all repositories, the spokesperson said.

Click here to read about Symantec's e-discovery control suite.

The product works with existing e-mail infrastructure and archiving solutions from EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Symantec and market leader Zantaz.

Hogan Marren Ltd., a Chicago health care and labor law firm, recently used Clearwell to analyze several GBs of data in defending a client in a multimillion-dollar fraud claim.

"Clearwell helped me to get through thousands of e-mails quickly in preparation for production of documents subject to an expedited discovery order," said Mike Tecson, a litigation associate with the firm. "Clearwell saved our firm substantial manpower and hours."

With Clearwell 2.0, legal and forensics professionals can not only analyze e-mails and documents using a single product but also understand how a particular document traversed through the organization. Customers can, for the first time, connect the two disparate data types of e-mail and files, enabling them to analyze the conversations behind the documents, the spokesperson said.

This ability to place documents in context has proven critical in answering the central question in any legal request, regulatory inquiry or corporate investigation: Who knew what, and when.

"E-discovery represents a significant challenge for companies," said Vivian Tero, senior research analyst at IDC. "Solutions like Clearwell's e-mail and document analytics provide critical capabilities, including discussion threads, advanced cull-down, 'one-click' tagging, comprehensive review workflow and sophisticated analytics. These features resonate strongly with customers who are managing multiple discovery requests involving massive amounts of data."

Clearwell Systems is a privately held company based in Santa Clara, Calif. Pricing information is available on an individual basis. For more information, go here.

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