[Webcast Transcript] Command, Control, and Clarity: The New Standard for eDiscovery
Editor’s Note: Legal teams today are under mounting pressure to do more with less—manage growing datasets, meet tight deadlines, and control costs while maintaining visibility and security across matters. In response, the demand for unified, intuitive platforms that offer true operational control is stronger than ever. In HaystackID’s recent webcast, “Command, Control, and Clarity: The New Standard for eDiscovery,” leaders Todd Haley and Aaron Pribil share how HaystackID is reimagining eDiscovery through CoreFlex™, a platform built to empower users with transparency, automation, and flexibility. Their discussion offers a candid look at the challenges faced by legal professionals and how CoreFlex addresses them head-on. Read the full transcript to learn more about how CoreFlex is enhancing legal workflows and reimagining how eDiscovery leaders handle their matters.
Expert Panelists
+ Todd Haley
Executive Vice President of Operations, HaystackID
In 2008, Todd M. Haley joined HaystackID and its associated acquisitions and is currently the Executive Vice President and General Manager for the global data operations group. As Executive Vice President of Operations, Todd Haley plans, directs, coordinates, and oversees operational activities at HaystackID, ensuring the development and implementation of efficient operations and cost-effective systems to meet the current and future needs of the eDiscovery service line.
+ Aaron Pribil, M.S., PMC
Senior Product Manager, HaystackID
Aaron Pribil is a seasoned product manager and technology consultant with extensive experience in eDiscovery, cloud-based solutions, and data communication tools. Currently, he serves as the Senior Product Manager for the eDiscovery Enterprise Platform at HaystackID. In this position, Aaron focuses on advancing the platform’s capabilities to meet the evolving needs of legal and corporate clients.
[Webcast Transcript] Command, Control, and Clarity: The New Standard for eDiscovery
By HaystackID Staff
The eDiscovery landscape has no shortage of complexities, as practitioners often juggle fragmented tools, rising costs, limited visibility, and pressure to deliver faster, smarter results with fewer resources. As data volumes grow and case demands fluctuate, legal teams are asking for more than just service—they want control, transparency, and seamless access to the tools and insights that drive outcomes. During the recent HaystackID® webcast, “Command, Control, and Clarity: The New Standard for eDiscovery,” Todd Haley, Executive Vice President of Operations at HaystackID, and Aaron Pribil, Director of Product Management at HaystackID, addressed these industry pain points and how CoreFlex™ will give eDiscovery leaders the flexibility and control they need to handle their matters.
Haley and Pribil outlined how CoreFlex was designed to unify both self-serve and full-service matters through a single, intuitive interface—what they call a “single pane of glass.” This model empowers legal teams to upload files, manage users, track case activity, and generate reports without relying on vendor intervention, even during off-hours. The platform was intentionally built on HaystackID’s existing infrastructure, not as a separate entity, ensuring users interact with the same data and reports as HaystackID’s internal teams. With integrations into Relativity Server, RelativityOne, and soon Slack and Microsoft 365®, CoreFlex is evolving into a platform-agnostic solution tailored to the flexibility modern legal teams require.
CoreFlex puts command and control into the hands of its users while maintaining the ability to scale and shift to full-service support when cases suddenly escalate. With real-time visibility, role-based access, user activity tracking, and dynamic, customizable reporting, the platform is designed to meet clients where they are—and grow with them. As the expert panelists emphasized, every aspect of CoreFlex has been shaped by direct client feedback, reinforcing HaystackID’s commitment to practical innovation and legal enablement. Watch the webcast recording and read the full transcript below to learn more.
Transcript
Moderator
Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar. We have a great session lined up for you today. Before we get started, there are just a few general housekeeping points to cover. First and foremost, please use the online question tool to post any questions you have, and we will share them with our speakers. Second, if you experience any technical difficulties today, please use the same question tool, and a member of our admin team will be on hand to support you. And finally, just to note, this session is being recorded, and we’ll be sharing a copy of the recording with you via email in the coming days. So, without further ado, I’d like to hand it over to our speakers to get us started.
Aaron Pribil
Hi, everyone. Hi, everyone, and welcome to another HaystackID webcast. I’m Aaron Pribil, and today’s presentation and discussion, “Command, Control, and Clarity: The New Standard for eDiscovery,” is part of HaystackID’s ongoing educational series designed to help you stay ahead of the curve in achieving your cybersecurity, information governance, and eDiscovery objectives. We are recording today’s webcast for future on-demand reviewing, and we’ll make the recording and a complete presentation transcript available on the HaystackID website. Today, we’ll be exploring organizations’ expectations for eDiscovery providers and why they need solutions that provide transparency and efficiency without added complexity. Before we get into the agenda, Todd and I will quickly introduce ourselves. As mentioned, my name’s Aaron Pribil. I am the Director of Product Management here at HaystackID. While I’m not doing product management, I’ve been in this market space for about a little over 18 years now. It has been on both the side of software and legal service providers. I have a unique perspective from each of those organizational perspectives that has helped me get a good baseline of the eDiscovery industry. I have a long, long history in this space. And in particular, in the latter half of my career, I’ve gravitated towards product management. I have a huge desire to help make this legal community a better place. HaystackID has been a great place to tap into the market and hear what clients need, and I am excited to talk to you about that today. Todd, I’ll hand it back to you.
Todd Haley
Thank you. My name is Todd Haley. I’m the Executive Vice President of Operations here at HaystackID. That really means that I manage our project manager’s data automation, data processing, cyber, and analytics groups here at Haystack. But today, I’m going to use my experience in law firms, corporations, and now as a service provider to talk a little bit about a new solution and new concepts for managing their matters. Before we move into the agenda, I want to make sure we do a couple of housekeeping items. If there are any questions, please feel free to put them in the question section of Zoom. We will answer those questions as we proceed. Depending on the questions, we may wait until the end, but we will have time to cover them at that point. With that, let me go ahead and jump into the agenda. Today, I’m going to start the presentation and talk to you about the state of eDiscovery and the components that we’re going to discuss today, some key industry challenges and the solutions related to them, and the concept of command, control, and clarity. I will then turn it over to Aaron to talk about the technology, concepts, and solutions that we’re bringing to the table to address those issues. So, with that, let’s talk about the state of eDiscovery. There are four things that we’re going to focus on today around this: siloed tools and disconnected teams. The idea is that our clients have been telling us that they want to get rid of silos and begin to be able to integrate tools into a single interface, which will allow them to connect their teams better than they can do today. Second, costs are escalating due to inefficient workflows. This really comes from the inability to see those workflows and work in conjunction with their vendors. They are looking for something that will allow them to minimize costs while allowing transparency into those workflows and control over them. Next is the lack of visibility into their matters and user activity. Today, many of the matters that we have helped our clients manage require that our project teams create new matters, disable matters, create new users, and disable users. We are working on solutions that will allow individuals to manage each of these on their own and directly within our system. Next is finding proactive management solutions. One of the things that we are looking at with our clients is how we can provide better reporting and capabilities to allow them to have proactive management in conjunction with the project teams that they work with today. What industry challenges are we handling? Let’s start with fragmentation. The biggest thing is that today, because of the complexity of data, multiple tools are used for any particular matter. There can be standard review and processing tools, but there are also video, audio, and other tools. The idea is to give more visibility to these tools and allow management to occur across these platforms through a single pane of glass. Next is volume. Too much data, not enough control. So the idea behind this is to give a single pane of glass that allows you to see into that data, both at the matter level and the portfolio level, across all your matters. Whether they are self-serve or full-serve matters or different types of matters, the idea is to give control in multiple different places. Next is access, which is the ability to get into the system, see user activity in real time, see data movement as it occurs, and allow clients to see that as it moves through our workflows. This allows them to combine their workflows and our workflows seamlessly. Next, ensure those end-to-end workflows are integrated together, that they can be mapped, and that they can be seen no matter what is going on or what the matters are. Last but not least, a simpler interface. We have had solutions for the last few years that allow many of the things we talked about. But our clients came to us and asked for a simpler interface, an easier way to do things, and a better, more concise way to handle things so that they could get faster results. Next is what we are trying to achieve. Well, we’re trying to aim towards a new standard that our clients have been asking for, which really comes around command, control, and clarity. For command, what it really means is being able to gain mastery over all aspects of your matters. Whether they are in-house or with your provider, you should be able to have access and transparency into all components of that matter, and allow you to be able to identify matter owners, the stages of each matter, and any activity that is going on in that matter. Second, it takes that command and controls access to users across the portfolio. Deciding who has access, when they have access, where they have it, and understanding the components of that control so that they can ensure that they have their hands on the wheel and can manage their manage. Then, last but not least, is clarity. And I really want to think of this as transparency. The idea is that we are going to give you real-time dashboards that allow you to drill down through matters, data, and users to be able to see what you need to see so that you understand exactly what is going on in your matter in the near-time. This idea around clarity, control, and command allows you to ensure that you manage your matters and have a better handle on your large portfolio. Let’s talk briefly about what our counsel has said they need. Well, they want greater transparency, the ability to see into all of their matters, every component of their matter, and easier access without having to go through an individual to get that transparency. Second, they want faster response times. They want to get and see immediate access to the analytics, the reporting, and the data variables in their matter. Next is better resource utilization. Many of our clients are concerned because they may need additional assistance to start or end the matter or set up users. Last but not least, they are asking for reduced reliance on our teams to manage some of their self-serve matters, small matters, and other items of that nature. What kind of solutions are we talking about for counsel-based earnings? Well, the first is one view of all matters. Think of it as a single pane of glass: the ability to see all the things I’ve talked about so far, but in one view with simpler controls and a better interface. Second is immediate access to analytics and reporting. This means not only access to the standard reports that you may have, but all reports, processing reports, posting reports, and user reports, so that you have information about your matters at your fingertips and control over how those matters and users are handled. Next is centralized user management. The idea behind this is that we want to be able to give you the ability to add users, activate users, or deactivate users. Last but not least, it gives you autonomy from the external teams for basic operations and small-scale management. You can use the same tools with the same power that we use when we do it in a full-serve situation, but you have that full power, automation, and capability at your fingertips. Whether you’re working with HaystackID or another provider, we think what our counsel should demand is transparent workflows from their vendors, a matter status update without having to ask, being able to get directly to those status updates, and finally, a system that allows for platform-agnostic management of matters and data. With the amount of technology today, it means that multiple platforms are being used across a single matter. But clients should not have to understand all of those platforms in able to get what they want. So by providing transparency, statuses on demand, and platform-agnostic solutions, counsel can start to work towards a better tech stack. What should counsel look for in their tech stack? First, a unified interface will be used to manage all activities. Second, role-based user permissions. Third, live matter tracking. Fourth, integration with industry-standard platforms. And finally, scalability to flex with case demands. This fifth section is the most important on this slide. The idea behind the first four is that we need to be able to adjust to our specific client demands. So, in addition to all of the things that we’ve talked about today so far, we really want to think about the flexibility to be able to modify, customize, and provide a specific solution to our clients that’s related to how they view work. We want to provide that flexibility, which is why I’m going to turn this over now to Aaron to talk about CoreFlex.
Aaron Pribil
Thanks, Todd. So, to focus on everything that Todd covered and expand upon it, we’re going to discuss our vision around a centralized eDiscovery solution called CoreFlex a little bit. We have several areas that we focused on, and you’ll keep hearing a single pane of glass consistently throughout the webinar. We want to have an all-in-one interface that eliminates the need for multiple tools, feels like a fragmented environment versus a unified environment, and reduces complexity. In addition to reducing complexity, we look at our workflows. How can we automate? How can we improve our workflows? How can we institute best practices in a very simplistic manner without having to really worry about the automation piece? On top of that, we’re looking at cost-efficient workflows. This comes from the synergy of automation, reducing repetitive tasks and error-prone processes through automation, learning from mistakes, and growing and building automation to improve all our processes. On top of that, time. Time is of major importance in our marketplace. So being able to have a scalable solution that can scale up and down based on unexpected workloads, i.e., fluctuations in workflows, to be able to handle that. Next is comprehensive security around this framework. Security is very important in our space. In recent years, we’ve seen security issues around the marketplace and in our industry, which are constantly on our minds. And not only that, but data privacy and the growing concerns of how you manage your data? What are you doing with our data? We’ve put a lot of thought into those things and continue to put a lot of thought into watching what is going on in the marketplace, which is constantly evolving and adjusting. Last is our roadmap and enhancements. One thing we pride ourselves on is a continuous feedback loop. We don’t build in vacuums. We look at what is going on with our clients, what are their pain points? Understanding those pain points and addressing those pain points. There are three points that we want to focus on with our platform. From a product perspective, I didn’t get to set the intro, but with the product, the way I look at it is product-building around services and productizing services. So, looking at all our services, how can we put packages in a product format, i.e., a single pane of glass? How do we support and take care of our clients? We do this through a hybrid model. We built our framework around the idea of seamlessly moving from self-service to full-service support needs. So with us, we’re not handing you the keys to the kingdom and saying, “Good luck.” Whether you know it or not, we’re there every step of the way. And when the situation arises where you need assistance from us, i.e., a matter blows up unexpectedly and expands exponentially, with data these days and how data can explode very fast and furious, you pick up the phone or email or call and just say, “Hey, this got out of control, we need help,” and we’re there to help. The automation we’ve built around the interface allows us to step in and help because that same automation is what we leverage in our full-service model. So there aren’t any services that we’re not allowing you through the command and control, and the self-service portion should you want. We’re here to provide as much control as you need or when you need to hand over that control to us to be able to do so seamlessly. Last is the platform’s scalability, being able to scale up and down and move data quickly when necessary. We’re innovating by examining the industry’s baseline, identifying challenges, fixing them, improving them, streamlining them, and supporting our legal teams in navigating complex eDiscovery and the regulatory landscape. So, at one point in the webinar, Todd talked about matter management. What’s the status of the matter? What’s going on with my matter? Being able to peer in through our single pane of glass and understand what the status is. How was this case set up? Is it in the appropriate time zone? Did we have exclusion lists? What are my high-level metrics for this? Within our UI, we took a minimalist approach, meaning we want to make that single pane of glass simplistic, with the least amount of clicks possible for the maximum amount of information gain, and controlling and commanding, and understanding what is going on with our matter.
Todd Haley
Aaron, the audience has a question. Does the CoreFlex product allow you to access both your self-serve and full-serve matters? And is it a separate system from your full-serve system?
Aaron Pribil
Oh, that’s an excellent question. To address that question, this single pane of glass vision that we have with our system is a full-service and self-service window. So you will see not only your self-service matters but your full-service matters as well. Even have the flexibility to have a file that needs to be immediately uploaded; it’s 11:00 PM at night, and you have a file thrown at you, and it needs to get into the system. It doesn’t need to be duplicated; it needs to get in there; it’s a big deal. You can go into that full-service matter, upload that file, get it into the platform, and do what you need to do with it. And you don’t have to pick up a phone, you don’t have to wait for resources around that. You’re able to do that. And that’s the degree of flexibility we’re thinking about to help empower our clients, again giving them that command and control.
Todd Haley
Great. And Aaron, I’ll answer the second part of the thing. One of the things that we decided when we built CoreFlex is that we would build it right on top of our existing system. Unlike some other providers that have built these systems as separate entities, we build it so that the matters you’re looking at, the data you’re looking at, are the exact same data and reports that our teams are looking at on the full power of the system that we have as well.
Aaron Pribil
Yeah, that’s right. Good point. User control is very important. Todd said this earlier in the webinar about giving that command and control, that ability to enable, disable, add, understand what users are in what cases, and add your own users. We provide that to all with ease, both at the matter level and at the global scale level of managing your users. That comes with controlled base access as well. So, we have different roles not only within our CoreFlex platform but also within our review platforms. We provide a lot of flexibility and control, and have put a lot of thought into how we want to allow our users, whether it’s within our single pane of glass framework or within our review platform of choice framework, and what our clients can and can’t do.
Todd Haley
One thing I’ll add to the user control is we are also working on user reporting that will allow you to immediately bring to the center those users who may not have logged in within a certain amount of time to allow you better maintenance of those users, as well as reports that are specific and customized to you in how you want to see those users by either individual or internal users, external users, things of that nature. So we are evolving that as our clients are asking for additional information.
Aaron Pribil
Yeah, that’s a great point. Now, we provide a track history of our matter and data visibility. So you understand what data for what custodians are on the date, the source, and the size. Was it deduplicated? Was it not? Was there an exclusion list or not? Did this get OCR’d? Capturing all that information in a single area for you to easily review and download a great track history. It is very easy to pull, and we always seek continuous feedback from our clients. Is there other information that we could put in here? Is there information that you don’t care about? We are constantly evolving this platform. I will also mention that with the processing stages, you’ll see the different processing stages and see if they are in progress. Is it completed? So you get additional visibility and notifications. On the portfolio level, we have even grander robustness around your visibility across all matters. You can get reporting, as Todd mentioned about the users; when was the last time they logged in? This kind of also gives you a viewpoint, has the case gone quiet? Is it time to take this case out of the mix and archive it? It puts that command and control, again, at your fingertips. You don’t have to pick up a phone and talk to your client services team to say, “Well, give me a report of all my matters so I can see if there’s anything I need to retire, archive, or nearline.” You can do that all within your portfolio, getting an idea of your heavier case activities versus your lighter case activities. We’re looking for constant feedback. All these reports and everything we’ve put together here have been purely back on our client base and the market, as well as what we’re hearing across the board.
Todd Haley
There’s another question, Aaron. From the image, it looks like you can slice and call data right in the interface. Is that correct?
Aaron Pribil
Yeah, no, that’s correct. You can do that within these reports, such as interactive reporting and calling of data information. They’re dynamic in that sense. As you’re clicking across your cases, those different graphs you see up on the screen will adjust and change and give you that reporting you’re looking for. Also, across your tabs, you have various reports that are broken out. What do you want to understand more about your processing, your hosting, your raw users in your workspace, who haven’t logged in for a while? Is it time to deactivate this user? Is it time to retire this matter? All at your fingertips.
Todd Haley
One other question for the audience. Besides Relativity, which was on the screen, are there other platforms integrating with CoreFlex?
Aaron Pribil
The two platforms that we are tying into at present are Relativity Server and RelativityOne. Keep in mind that our platform and how we’re building it out are truly an agnostic platform. We’re not limiting the tools you’re using here. We’re not limiting review platforms. If there are other review platforms that our clients are trending and saying, “We would like to be able to leverage what you have here around Product A, Product B,” we’ll look at that, evaluate the demand, and plan and roadmap. So we’re not limiting you to Rel Server or RelOne, whether it be Nuix processing, whether it be Relativity Processing, it’s choose your journey, what works best for you.
Todd Haley
That’s great. I’ll add just two others to that. On the roadmap, we have Slack right now. That will be on the very early roadmap to be able to integrate and directly access a Slack instance, as well as be able to pull the Slack instance by participant, and other things. The thing further this year is an M365 connector as well that’ll allow email collection and email reporting through the CoreFlex platform. Those are two, but it really goes to the point that what we are doing over time is adding more and more of what our clients want to see and put into this single platform.
Aaron Pribil
The key takeaways for our attendees today are four cornerstone points. One is to demand transparency in your technical stack. You should have and be able to understand what is going on in your environment, what is going on with your matters, what is going on with the users, what data is going in, and whether the data has gone in. The second is to ask for self-service features without vendor dependency. So, you can get your reporting, create your users, load your data, access your review platform, and begin that review process. You want to have that control, yet have the flexibility to move into a full-service if you need it. Require near real-time or real-time visibility into your matters, your data, and your users. Ensure your tech allows you to scale up or down as needed. I think that is also a very critical point. We always know inside this industry, things move fast and furious and wax and wane. And when they wax and wane, the systems that are built around these solutions need to be able to meet that demand. Lastly, bringing it all together, you’ve seen just now how we envision a solution around the market and what the market demand is. It’s important that there’s always a finger on the pulse of the market, of our clients, building for our clients, and what they’re demanding, what they need, and what they’re willing to pay for. Not being inside a vacuum or thinking this would be great or neat are core points to think about when you’re scaling and building a solution. If you’re interested in learning more, certainly reach out to Todd or me. We’re happy to coordinate, give you more insight into CoreFlex, and schedule a live demo.
Todd Haley
There are a couple more questions, Aaron. The first is whether CoreFlex is available today.
Aaron Pribil
CoreFlex is not quite available today, but we are very close. We are planning a general availability date of June 1st. We are in the final stages of wrapping up security, but we intend to do it at the beginning of June.
Todd Haley
Okay, and the second question I’ll answer. The second question is, how do you manage processing and review through CoreFlex? What Aaron said earlier is important. We are pretty agnostic when it comes to how we do that. We have clients in our current versions of CoreFlex that do Nuix to Relativity Server. We do Nuix to RelativityOne. We do all RelativityOne. And as I said earlier, we are also going to be, over time, integrating audio, video, and other platforms as well. Are there any other questions out there? We’ve answered everyone’s questions, Aaron. So I want to thank everyone for joining today’s webcast. Towards the end here, I will turn it back to Mona to cover some final housekeeping things, but we truly value your time and appreciate your interest in our educational series. Don’t miss our upcoming May 21st webcast, “Faster Finds, Newer Files: A Smarter Approach to Email Investigations.” During the program, HaystackID’s digital forensics experts will discuss modern challenges in email investigations and how they can use emerging methodologies to approach these investigations efficiently and effectively. Check out our website as well, HaystackID.com, to learn more, register for this upcoming webcast, and explore our extensive library of on-demand webcasts. Once again, thank you for attending today’s webcast, and we hope you have a great day.
Aaron Pribil
Thanks for joining us today. We appreciate your time.
Moderator
That wraps up our masterclass. Thank you all for joining us today. Thanks to our speakers, Todd and Aaron, for their time and efforts in preparing and delivering this session. As mentioned earlier, this session was recorded, and we’ll share a copy of the recording with you later today. Thank you once again, and enjoy the rest of your day.
About HaystackID®
HaystackID® specializes in solving complex data challenges related to legal, compliance, regulatory, and cyber events. Core offerings include Global Advisory, Data Discovery Intelligence, the HaystackID Core® Platform, and AI-enhanced Global Managed Review powered by ReviewRight®. Recognized globally by industry leaders like Chambers, Gartner, IDC, and Legaltech News, HaystackID prioritizes security, privacy, and integrity in its innovative solutions for leading companies and legal practices worldwide.
Assisted by GAI and LLM technologies.
SOURCE: HaystackID