The legal technology landscape has seen a significant update with the general availability of MARC, a new generative AI-powered document review system announced by Altorney. Designed to automate first-pass review decisions in e-discovery processes, MARC promises substantial cost savings and security enhancements by processing documents before they enter traditional review platforms.
Unveiled initially in March, MARC has completed a successful pilot with corporate legal departments. It is now available for broader deployment across corporate legal teams, litigation service providers, and law firms. This tool addresses a longstanding issue in e-discovery: the inefficiency and risk associated with loading entire document sets into costly platforms only to cull non-responsive portions later. Altorney’s CEO, Shimmy Messing, highlights that this traditional approach not only incurs unnecessary costs but also creates security vulnerabilities by keeping redundant data externally stored.
MARC automates the culling and initial review, facilitating decisions on issues like privilege and confidentiality within the organization’s own environment. Consequently, only pertinent documents progress to expensive hosting platforms, potentially reducing hosting and review costs significantly.
The system operates flexibly across multiple environments, supporting various large language models like Altorney’s locally installed Llama model, or integrating approved models such as those from Azure and OpenAI. Notably, MARC ensures that data remains within an organization’s firewall, avoiding external transmission and associated security concerns.
Underpinning MARC’s robust performance is its unique protocol analysis approach. Users upload case-specific materials, after which MARC generates a comprehensive protocol document in Microsoft Word, detailing parties, dates, and key themes among other elements. This eliminates the need for complex prompt engineering, streamlining the review initiation for legal professionals familiar with Word editing.
Beyond first-pass review, MARC offers advanced functionalities including privilege review, PII and PHI detection, issue coding, and foreign language processing. In doing so, it not only determines document relevance but provides reasoning, fostering transparency and defensibility in legal processes.
During pilot implementations, such as a Fortune 500 company case, MARC demonstrated its ability to reduce review and hosting costs by 62% and 78% respectively, showcasing its potential to revolutionize e-discovery by optimizing legal workflows and reducing manual intervention.
Initially targeted at corporate environments to contain culling within a company’s ecosystem, MARC has expanded scope due to market demand, becoming accessible to litigation service providers and, ultimately, law firms. This rollout aims to align with varied organizational needs, balancing deployment feasibility with cost reductions and efficiency gains.
Altorney positions itself as a niche player in legal technology, drawing on the expertise of its founders, Shimmy and Rachi Messing, to deliver solutions that address ongoing challenges in legal workflows. The development and naming of MARC pays tribute to the Messing family, honoring their late father, a committed attorney and educator. Moving forward, Altorney is set on advancing legal tech with MARC at the forefront, championing innovation across e-discovery practices.
For a comprehensive outline of MARC’s capabilities and insights into its strategic deployment, please visit LawNext’s coverage.