Mac-based Discovery software?
June 23, 2011 10:29 AM Subscribe
Mac-based Discovery / document review software? Westlaw CaseLogistix nails the functions but is Windows-only.
Must have the ability to manage Bates-stamped PDF/TIF documents with embedded OCR text. Bonus for other file types in addition. Multiple networked users need to analyze/tag documents based on case-specific criteria.
It would be great if the information could be easily exported to an open format, but I know that's likely asking too much.
I searched through the Macs In Law blog but didn't see any good candidates.
What do Mac-based law firms use?
DevonThink did not have enough legal-specific functions. QD Documents is overly complex and must be spoon-fed data in a very specific and inflexible way.
DevonThink did not have enough legal-specific functions. QD Documents is overly complex and must be spoon-fed data in a very specific and inflexible way.
Are you looking for a hosted solution? Or something managed in-house?
For hosted I would check out AlphaLit- tool meets all of your requirements, they have great project management and support, and runs fine on Mac (you connect to the platform via Citrix)
posted by mhaw at 12:57 PM on June 23, 2011
For hosted I would check out AlphaLit- tool meets all of your requirements, they have great project management and support, and runs fine on Mac (you connect to the platform via Citrix)
posted by mhaw at 12:57 PM on June 23, 2011
I was going to suggest a citrix solution as well. At my old firm, we used summation, but now I use CaseLogistix, but from home I access(d) them with citrix. So, if you love CaseLogistix, maybe set it up that way somehow?
posted by dpx.mfx at 1:16 PM on June 23, 2011
posted by dpx.mfx at 1:16 PM on June 23, 2011
Forget it. At a recent legal tech conference with >50 vendors, I didn't see a single Mac - although they were all offering the chance to win an iPad, funnily enough. I asked Mrs. Browl, a senior development manager at a leading e-discovery vendor, whose reply was 'does he want to be an artist or a lawyer? No.'
She doesn't think there's enough of a market, and says most people would just have a Mac disk/filesystem converted and transferred to NTFS or some universal filesystem for intake into a PC-based discovery system. I suggested that you rpobably had a Mac and now need to do some discovery work, and she said your best hope is a server-side product with a web-based client UI, or a Windows box into which you can VPN for discovery work, as with Citrix. I have it on good authority that even at Apple, the legal department uses Windows.
I happen to know that Lexis/Nexis recently open-sourced their document database engine, which is an interesting competitor to Hadoop/Lucene, MapReduce, and other cluster-based solutions for large document volumes. It's Unix-based and would be relatively easy to port to MacOS, but the OS process has just started and it will likely be a year before any 3rd party solutions reach the marketplace. In any case, it's heavily biased towards server-side processing rather than end user applications. So I'd say it's time to face reality andsettle get a copy of Parallels, so you can dual-boot your Mac.
posted by anigbrowl at 12:48 AM on June 28, 2011
She doesn't think there's enough of a market, and says most people would just have a Mac disk/filesystem converted and transferred to NTFS or some universal filesystem for intake into a PC-based discovery system. I suggested that you rpobably had a Mac and now need to do some discovery work, and she said your best hope is a server-side product with a web-based client UI, or a Windows box into which you can VPN for discovery work, as with Citrix. I have it on good authority that even at Apple, the legal department uses Windows.
I happen to know that Lexis/Nexis recently open-sourced their document database engine, which is an interesting competitor to Hadoop/Lucene, MapReduce, and other cluster-based solutions for large document volumes. It's Unix-based and would be relatively easy to port to MacOS, but the OS process has just started and it will likely be a year before any 3rd party solutions reach the marketplace. In any case, it's heavily biased towards server-side processing rather than end user applications. So I'd say it's time to face reality and
posted by anigbrowl at 12:48 AM on June 28, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
Looks like your Mac options are limited to Nextpoint and Lexbe, the latter of which is actually web-based.
But you seem to be operating under the assumption that there are Mac-based law firms. I'm not personally aware of any. Windows is pretty dominant, and most law firms of which I'm aware are only now completing the transition away from WordPerfect, and some of the older partners and support staff swear by it.
posted by valkyryn at 11:15 AM on June 23, 2011