ActiveNav today released MatterID, a new capability in its ActiveNav Cloud data discovery platform that identifies and classifies law firm matter content stored outside the document management system (DMS). MatterID integrates with a firm’s systems of record data, then uses the firm’s own matter data definitions to match files to matters across repositories including iManage, NetDocuments, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Exchange, Google Workspace, and file shares.
Matter files routinely accumulate in collaboration tools, email, and file shares that fall outside DMS governance. Because firms manage hundreds of thousands of active and closed matters, locating that content has typically required a separate search per matter. The problem is drawing new attention as client audits and outside counsel guidelines grow more demanding, attorneys move between firms more often, and AI projects require clean, classified source data.
“Law firms have a particular obligation to steward client data, and most can’t say with confidence where their matter content lives,” said Peter Baumann, CEO and co-founder of ActiveNav. “MatterID gives firm leadership a defensible answer. That shows up in storage costs, in breach exposure, in how quickly the firm can answer a client audit, and in whether its data is fit to build AI on.”
Once integrated with the firm’s intake, time, and billing system data, MatterID scores each discovered file against the firm’s matter records using metadata, file content, and the firm’s identifiers. Governance teams review the results in dashboards, apply retention rules, and dispose of content with a logged audit trail.
“Discovery tools can index a repository and tell you what is in it. But, they can’t tell you which files belong to a matter because that knowledge lives in the firm’s billing and intake systems,” said Rich Hale, chief technology officer of ActiveNav. “Creating and maintaining classifiers that operate across hundreds of thousands of matters has previously not been practical. MatterID starts there. A records team that used to search one matter at a time can now see every matter, across every repository, in a single scan.”
Early customer applications include matter-based retention and disposition, attorney offboarding, cleanup of redundant, obsolete, and trivial data, client audit response, and curating data for AI use.
About ActiveNav
ActiveNav makes data discovery software that helps law firms, legal departments, and other organizations find, classify, and govern unstructured data. Over 15 years, the company has worked with more than 300 organizations in 28 countries and discovered more than 15 billion files. ActiveNav is headquartered in Reston, Virginia, with offices in the UK and Australia. Learn more at activenav.com.
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Christopher Strah
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christopher.strah@activenav.com