Image courtesy of Nuix
Nuix at LegalTech next week will show two new products and will introduce Deborah Baron, former vice president of e-discovery and compliance at Autonomy, as its new chief marketing officer.
Nuix launched its namesake Nuix 4.0 in July 2012 and now debuts version 4.2 with predictive coding, the company announced Thursday.
Predictive coding, also known as technology-assisted review, is software that uses artificial intelligence to guide human reviewers in determining document relevance. Nuix CEO Eddie Sheehy said his company is using technology derived from records management techniques and spam filters. Customers will configure the new software based on results from early-case assessment and concept clustering, he noted. (Concept clustering is a search method of grouping similar documents together based on keywords.)
Nuix 4.2 offers two new mark-up options: redaction, and automatic mark-up based on word lists. Users can also import data from Autonomy software. The new edition supports Cellebrite's and Micro Systemation's mobile forensic products, including tools to help users retrieve data from smart phones. The upgrade expands the options for importing metadata from Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. Nuix 4.2 also adds new features such as recovery of deleted files; examining binary code structures; and indexing/viewing the Microsoft Windows registry.
The 4.2 upgrade will be free for customers who have midrange or high-end support contracts, Sheehy explained.
At LegalTech, at the Hilton New York, Nuix will showcase its new line of information governance products, called Luminate. It includes archive indexing and searching; archive migration; and a data destruction dashboard, Sheehy said. "We've been asked for very different unstructured data [products], increasing over the last 12 months," he explained. "We've had requests for defensible deletion so often it isn't even funny."
Luminate products will ship next week, Sheehy said. Nuix, based in San Francisco, and in Sydney, Australia, already posted a Luminate overview site on its website.
Deborah Baron is a veteran of the legal technology circuit. She worked at Hewlett-Packard Co. early in her career, moved to IBM's Lotus division, and then edged closer to e-discovery at search specialist Sentius Corp. She joined Zantaz Inc. in 2002, which Autonomy purchased for $375 million in 2007 -- bringing her full-circle to HP, which acquired Autonomy in 2011 for $11.1 billion.
Baron was unavailable to comment Thursday. Nuix approached Baron late in 2012, acknowledged Sheehy. Noting the current accounting controversy at Autonomy, "We were the first people to talk to her, if she was going on the marketplace," he said. Nuix has been seeking a CMO for several months, he said, adding that he expects Baron to take an active role in product development because of her expertise.
Austin-based attorney and forensics expert Craig Ball said the predictive coding and hiring news is a positive move for Nuix. On the software front, "I'm impressed that Nuix is adding the feature without increasing the price of the product. That means that existing Nuix users are going to have, for many, their first opportunity to use predictive coding, and see its strength." Many other companies sell predictive coding as a separate product, he said. "Free for me is always my favorite price," Ball quipped.
Asked about Baron, "Deborah is well-known and well-liked in the e-discovery space. I'm very happy to see her tied to a company with first-class values," Ball said. "I'm happy for Deborah that she is starting with a company that has a product where the value is manifestly clear."
Evan Koblentz is a reporter for Law Technology News. Send email or follow him on Twitter.
