We recently took a look in the rearview mirror at what transpired in 2018 . With the new year starting and Legaltech New York on the horizon, it’s time to pull out our trusty crystal ball, scatter some tea leaves, and read the Ouija board.

Here are three of the key trends that we’re following in 2019.

1. New eDiscovery tools will incorporate smarter legal technology.

Our clients, regardless of their size, are developing an increasing appetite for more sophisticated eDiscovery analytics. Although lawyers used to view analytics with skepticism, they’re now starting to recognize the value of these new tools, especially when they’re layered together. Given the volume and variety of data in the typical organization, we suspect that the time and costs associated with eDiscovery have forced their hand.

With our clients’ growing needs in mind, we’re releasing a beta version of our new Lumix Review platform , which we’ve developed with our partner Now Discovery. With Lumix Review, users can process 1 terabyte of their own data in a lightning-fast 12 hours and have that data ready for review in the same platform within a matter of minutes. Beta testers will be able to upload data, process it, and review it from anywhere. If you’re interested in either helping us beta test our flagship product at no cost or in scheduling a demo, please send us a message at partnerships@idiscoverglobal.com. You can also email us to set up an appointment for a demo at Legaltech New York between January 29 and 31.

2. Intelligent workflows premised on analytics will gain prevalence, even among small teams.

As organizations become more focused on creating repeatable workflows to help them streamline eDiscovery, analytics will play a large role in how they structure their processes. For example, natural language processing, an artificial intelligence tool, enables algorithms to better handle unstructured data, like emails, and understand their meaning. Review platforms with this capability can better categorize and process documents. Other analytics tools, such as concept clustering, are already premised on this capability. With concept clustering, algorithms sort documents into groups and subgroups (called “clusters” and “subclusters”) based on their similarities, including common keywords; it’s essentially like organizing files into labeled, cohesive file folders. Using concept clustering can improve the consistency of review, since reviewers are able to consider similar documents together rather than piecemeal. Leveraging analytics through tools like these help users—even at smaller firms—create workflows that streamline review.

3. eDiscovery costs will become more manageable.

Given the increased use of analytics and the fact that more legal teams are adopting advanced technology, the cost of taking a matter through the eDiscovery workflow should—finally!—start to decline. Here’s a general rule of thumb: the more advanced the technological resources deployed in a matter, the lower the cost of review will be. With the use of advanced tools like technology-assisted review, for example, you can reduce the effort it takes to review a document corpus by prioritizing the most responsive documents for review. From there, you can use lower-cost resources to review the documents that are likely to be nonresponsive or survey those documents for relevance and then skip their review entirely. The analytics tools mentioned above can also help reduce data volumes, find patterns and document relationships that accelerate review, and batch-tag duplicate documents. When you thoughtfully combine technology with the right workflows and review resources, you can make a meaningful dent in the cost of eDiscovery.

For additional insights into what we predict is coming in 2019 and beyond, keep following our blog. And be sure to check out our new Lumix Review processing and review platform at Legaltech New York. We’ll see you there!