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Avansic debuts e-discovery products
09-14-2009, The Journal Record - Kirby Lee Davis 
TULSA – Avansic expects two new electronic discovery products to help the Tulsa law firm consultants chart fivefold revenue growth in 2010.
This Web-based software targets an increasing headache to the legal community. Federal rule changes and judicial opinions raising the bar on e-document retrieval and review have fueled double-digit annual growth in what has become a $10 billion industry, according to a Sept. 5 article in Financial Times. The first new database system by Tulsa-based Avansic, called the Online Review Repository, is designed to help law firms contain those soaring e-discovery costs. Still in the testing stage is an unnamed package to help corporations manage electronically stored information, known as ESI. The company hopes to make that public next month. “This was very customer driven,” said Avansic founder, President and Chief Executive Gavin W. Manes. “Our business has changed to where our customers now come to us for help. This was the result of a customer request.” Celebrating its fifth anniversary this month, Manes has watched forensic demands shift from the foundation of his 16-employee firm to less than 30 percent of his business. While litigation activity has declined as law firms tightened their belts under the national recession, Manes attributed his company’s revenue stream shift more to pressing e-discovery demands. Those services now comprise 50 percent of Avansic’s revenue, which Manes projects will double this year to $2 million. With the new Web software in hand, he targeted $10 million in 2010. “We have grown from a boutique digital forensics company to a full-service ESI firm,” Manes said Friday. “We expect to break through this recession with lots of new services.” The software packages build on Avansic’s existing filtering services, which reduce ESI demands by several different techniques. Since a computer hard drive can hold the equivalent of 300,000 sheets of paper, these services can save law firms several days of work. The software promises further improvements. While the e-discovery software market has raised many competitors, including Tulsa-based Breeze, Manes expects the Online Review Repository’s Internet base to provide an advantage, allowing attorneys anywhere in the world to access and tag the stored, secure documents, their efforts immediately seen by all other users. “We were asked by a customer to build or find a tool that would allow attorneys to collaborate in reviewing documents,” he said. “This will facilitate usage in multiple states, multiple offices.” Reflecting Avansic’s forensic skill at uncovering redacted, edited or lost metadata, the Online Review Repository allows users to see documents in their native files, converting page views to tiff files that fit court-standard 8.5x11-inch page dimensions. The company secures confidential client resources on separate hard drives, allowing the firm to meet potential law enforcement subpoenas with only relevant data. Manes estimated the software’s development costs at over $50,000. Customer fees start at $350 per month for five gigabites of data, modified by the number of users and amount of data stored. Using a Web base promises to open more international markets for the Tulsa company, which in March recorded its first business outside the U.S. with redaction document tests involving Canada and several European Union members. “We have one customer testing the system that has people in South America reviewing data collected in upstate New York,” he said. |
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