Tag Archives: LegalTech

August 17, 2022 · 10:38 AM

Important SaaS Architecture Considerations for Legal Tech Software

by Kunjan Zaveri

With nearly all eDiscovery software now being offered on a SaaS basis, the cloud architecture decisions supporting the vendor’s platform are pivotal. Decisions on architecture design can lead to either very successful or very poor outcomes. The right architecture depends on the company’s SaaS delivery strategy, their customer profile and size, and the volume and nature of their anticipated transactions. These considerations are especially important in the legal tech space, which has some unique requirements and market dynamics such as heighted security and customization for large clients, and channel support (requiring platform portability), which are generally not as relevant to general SaaS architecture considerations.

At a high level, it is important to understand the two main SaaS architectures: multi-tenancy and single-tenancy. In cloud computing, tenancy refers to the allocation of computing resources in a cloud environment. In SaaS, tenancy is categorized into two formats: single-tenant SaaS and multi-tenant SaaS. In the single-tenant SaaS environment, each client has a dedicated infrastructure. Single-tenant products can’t be shared between clients and the buyer can customize the software according to their requirements. Multi-tenancy is an architecture where a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers. In a multi-tenant SaaS environment, many organizations share the same software and usually the same database (or at least a portion of a common database) to save and store data.

Single-tenancy and multi-tenancy SaaS each have their advantages and disadvantages, and the selection of either approach by a legal tech SaaS vendor should depend on their overall product and go-to-market strategy. Here are some of the advantages of a single-tenancy architecture:

1. Improved Security

With single-tenancy, each customer’s data is completely isolated from other customers with fewer and more trusted points of entry. The result is better overall security from outside threats and the prevention of one customer accessing another’s sensitive information, either intentionally or inadvertently.

2. Reliable Operations and Individual Tenant Scalability

Single-tenant SaaS architectures are considered more reliable as there is not a single point of failure that can affect all customers. For example, if one client uploads a massive amount of corrupt data that taxes resources and crashes the system, it won’t affect another clients’ instances. Single-tenancy is actually more scalable within an individual client instance, while multi-tenancy can better scale the addition and management of many customers.

3. Customization

Many large customers need specific features or unique security measures that require custom development, which can be very difficult in a multi-tenancy environment. Companies that use single-tenancy architecture can upgrade their services individually. Rather than waiting for the software provider to launch a universal update, users can update their accounts as soon as the download is available or decline patches that are not needed by a specific customer.  

4. Portability

With single-tenancy, a vendor can host their platform in their own SaaS environment, a channel partner’s environment, or enable their customers to install the solution behind their firewall or in their private cloud. Multi-tenancy SaaS does not allow for this flexibility.

Multi-tenant SaaS Advantages

Multi-tenancy is commonly utilized as most SaaS offerings are consumer or otherwise high-volume commoditized offerings, which necessitates such an architecture. Here are some of the key advantages of multi-tenant SaaS architecture over single-tenant:

1. Lower Costs

Since computing services are all shared under a multi-tenant architecture, it can cost less than a single-tenant structure. Scaling across the customer base is easier as new users utilize the same uniform software and resources as all the other customers.

2. Efficient Resources Spread Across all Customers

Because all resources are shared and uniform, multi-tenant architecture uses resources that, once engineered, offer optimum efficiency. Since it’s a changing environment where resources are accessed simultaneously, multi-tenant SaaS software needs to be engineered to have the capacity for powering multiple customers at once.

3. Fewer Maintenance Costs

Maintenance costs are usually associated with a SaaS subscription and aren’t passed through to the customer or incurred by the channel partner like with a single-tenant structure.

4. Shared Data Centers

Unlike a single-tenant environment, a vendor doesn’t have to create a new instance within the datacenter for every new user. Customers have to use a common infrastructure that removes the need to continually add partitioned instances for each new tenant.

So which architecture is the right one for a legal tech SaaS vendor? It completely depends on the company’s strategy, pricing, and nature of the offering. To illustrate this point, consider the examples of two hypothetical legal tech SaaS vendors: Acme and Widget.

Acme provides do it yourself data processing on a high-volume, low-cost basis, handling about 700 matters a week at an average project value of $400. Acme’s customer base is primarily small to medium size law firms and service providers who have multiple projects on different cases over the course of a year. Acme’s clients do not want to fuss with hardware or any software maintenance requirements.

Widget offers an enterprise-grade compliance and security data analytics platform, sold at an average sale price (ASP) of $400,000, but as high as $2 million for a dedicated annual license. Widget has 32 active enterprise customers and hopes to grow to 70 customers in three years with an even higher ASP. About a third of Widget’s clients prefer that Widget host the solution in Widget’s cloud instance. Another group of clients are large financial institutions that, for security and governance purposes, insist on self-hosting the platform in their own private cloud. The rest are instances sold through channel partners who prefer to host the platform themselves and provide value added services. Many Widget customers have particularized compliance requirements and other unique circumstances that require customization to support their needs.

For Acme, the correct choice is multi-tenancy. Acme offers a commoditized SaaS service, and it needs a high volume of individual customers to drive more transactional revenue growth. A single-tenancy architecture would prevent the company from scaling, would be too expensive, and unmanageable. However, some legal tech companies who have opted for this architectural approach have made the mistake of pursuing a more low-market commoditized strategy without making the initial considerable investment in engineering expertise and resources to build such an architecture.

In contrast, single-tenancy is the optimal architecture choice for Widget. While single-tenancy cloud is slightly more challenging to support, Widgets’ premium enterprise offering requires portability for the channel and rigorous security minded clients as well as customization, and thus is a clear fit for single-tenancy. In the future, Widget may have closer to a thousand customers or be acquired by a much larger company that will want to deploy the solution to their extensive client base. It would be a good idea for Widget to architect their single-tenancy platform in a manner, such as employing microservices, that will allow it to readily port it to a multi-tenancy environment when warranted.

So, for legal tech executives, the question to ask is whether your strategy and product offering is more in line with Widget or Acme. But the bottom line is to make sure your strategy drives your choice of architecture and not the other way around.

Kunjan Zaveri is the Chief Technology Officer of X1. (www.x1.com)

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September 27, 2016 · 10:02 AM

LTN: Social Media Evidence Even More Important than email and “Every Litigator” Needs to Address It

legaltech-news-thumbBrent Burney, a top eDiscovery tech writer of Legaltech News, recently penned a detailed product review of X1 Social Discovery after his extensive testing of the software. (Social Media: A Different Type of E-Discovery Collection, Legaltech News, September 2016). The verdict on X1 Social Discovery is glowing, but more on that in bit. Burney also provides very remarkable general commentary on how social media and other web-based evidence is essential for every litigation matter, noting that “email does not hold a flicker of a candle to what people post, state, admit and display in social media.” In emphasizing the critical importance of social media and other web-based evidence, Burney notes that addressing this evidentiary treasure trove is essential for all types and sizes of litigation matters.

Consistent to that point, there is a clear dramatic increase in legal and compliance cases involving social media evidence. Top global law firm Gibson Dunn recently reported that “the use of social media continues to proliferate in business and social contexts, and that its importance is increasing in litigation, the number of cases focusing on the discovery of social media continued to skyrocket.” Undoubtedly, this is  why Burney declares that “every litigator should include (X1 Social Discovery) in their technical tool belt,” and that X1 Social Discovery is “necessary for the smallest domestic issue all the way up to the largest civil litigation matter.” Burney bases his opinion on both the critical importance of social media evidence, and his verdict on the effectiveness of X1 Social Discovery, which he lauds as featuring an interface that “is impressive and logical” and providing “the ideal method” to address social media evidence for court purposes.

From a legal commentary standpoint, two relevant implications of the LTN article stand out. First, the article represents important peer review, publication and validation of X1 Social Discovery under the Daubert Standard, which includes those factors, among others, as a framework for judges to determine whether scientific or other technical evidence is admissible in federal court.

Secondly, this article reinforces the view of numerous legal experts and key Bar Association ethics opinions, asserting that a lawyer’s duty of competence requires addressing social media evidence. New Hampshire Bar Association’s oft cited ethics opinion states that lawyers “have a general duty to be aware of social media as a source of potentially useful information in litigation, to be competent to obtain that information directly or through an agent, and to know how to make effective use of that information in litigation.” The New York State Bar similarly weighed in noting that “A lawyer has a duty to understand the benefits and risks and ethical implications associated with social media, including its use as a … means to research and investigate matters.” And the America Bar Association recently published Comment [8] to Model Rule 1.1, which provides that a lawyer “should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.”

The broader point in Burney’s article is that X1 Social Discovery is enabling technology that provides the requisite feasibility for law firms, consultants, and other practitioners to transition from just talking about social media discovery to establishing it as a standard practice.  With the right software, social media collections for eDiscovery matters and law enforcement investigations can be performed in a very scalable, efficient and highly accurate process. Instead of requiring hours to manually review and collect a public Facebook account, X1 Social Discovery can collect all the data in minutes into an instantly searchable and reviewable format.

So as with any form of digital investigation, feasibility (as well as professional competence) often depends on utilizing the right technology for the job.  As law firms, law enforcement, eDiscovery service providers and private investigators all work social discovery investigations into standard operating procedures, it is critical that best practices technology is incorporated to get the job done. This important LTN review is an emphatic punctuation of this necessity.

 

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February 5, 2013 · 9:24 AM

Social Media Discovery Hotter Than Predictive Coding?

fire isolated over black backgroundIt was a great show last week at LegalTech New York. Definitely an increase in the number and quality of attendees and it was nice to see many friends and colleagues both old and new.

Also very noticeable were the many, many vendors sporting predictive coding (aka technology assisted review) messaging in their respective booths and various forms of marketing material. In fact, one industry colleague pointed me to a recent bold prediction offered by Recommind lawyer Howard Sklar, essentially proclaiming that predictive coding will have really hit the big time when a state bar organization issues an ethics opinion stating “that failure to use predictive coding is ethically questionable, if not unethical.” Sklar goes on to predict that such an opinion will come within the next 18 months.

I don’t disagree that such a development would be a big deal. But my question is, why stop at an advisory ethics opinion? What about an actual published court opinion where a sitting appellate judge decrees, without mincing words, that legal ethics obligations require lawyers to employ predictive coding? Now that would be huge. Something, in fact, like Griffin v. State, 192 Md. App. 518, 535 (2010), which addresses another hot topic in eDiscovery:

“[I]t should now be a matter of professional competence for attorneys to take the time to investigate social networking sites.”

Now to be fair, I must point out that Griffin v. State was reversed and remanded on other grounds (419 Md. 343 (2011)), but I would argue the overall impact from an ethics and best practices standpoint is still there.

Sklar also points out three appellate level cases with written opinions that discuss the concept of predictive coding, without any definitive rulings compelling its use, but nonetheless discussing the concept. Two of the three are even retrievable on Westlaw. I think such appellate-level published decisions are important, which is why we highlight the several thousands of published court decisions in the past three years (see here and here) that have compelled the production of, admitted into evidence, or otherwise recognized the importance of social media evidence to the case at hand. New cases are being published every day, to the point where we candidly have stopped counting due to the deluge. So by the standard set by of my esteemed fellow eDiscovery lawyer Mr. Sklar, social media discovery is a very hot field indeed.

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