The Truth About “Native” Review

This first post for 2009 centers around the notion of “native” document/ESI review. While I’m not sure who/what company first coined the term “native review”, I do know that the concept really picked up momentum during LegalTech 2005 when Ringtail burst on to the scene with its flagship product — Casebook — a web-based, “native” review tool. The primary benefit of “native” review was that it was no longer necessary to convert all electronic documents to a uniform format (typically either TIFF of PDF) prior to review. Not having to convert every single page of every single document meant huge savings in overall eDiscovery costs, and “native” review almost instantly became widely accepted as a best practice. In fact, so much hype was generated by Casebook that FTI Consulting acquired the Ringtail shortly after LegalTech 2005 for $35 MM (see here for the official press release on that acquisition).

My issue with the term “native review” is that it implies these tools are displaying documents in their native application, for example, xyz.doc displayed in MS Word. Of course, that is not the case, and to build a review platform that actually launched the native application of every document that might exist in a collection is completely outside the realm of feasibility. “Native” review tools still display documents through a viewer, just as TIFFs are displayed. However, “native” review viewers are more sophisticated in that they are able to render hundreds of document formats, and make them appear very similar to the way they would be displayed in their native application. In some instances (for MS Office documents for example), these native viewers even have hooks into the native applications that help refine the rendering, furthering the “native” review myth.

To take things a step further, virtually all “native” review tools use some variant of Oracle’s (formerly Stellent’s) Outside In viewer technology. Whether it be Avantstar’s Quick View Plus (used by Ringtail), or Daeja System’s ViewONE Pro (used by iCONECTnXT and LitScope), or some other flavor, it’s all Outside In behind the scenes. This is why all native review tools can claim virtually identical capabilities in terms of the number of file formats their application can render (which is up to over 400 at this point). Of course, Outside In is much more than just a viewer, but I’ll save further expansion on that topic for a later post.

Finally, let me reiterate that I am in no way questioning the benefits of “native” review — I am a huge proponent of this practice and believe any vendor recommending TIFF (or any other uniform image format) reviews is doing their client a disservice. I just think it’s important that both vendors and client’s alike understand what “native review” really means, which will (hopefully) help us all get on the same page.