Foley Completes a Half-Million Document Review in Under a Week and Builds Early Case Advantages with Relativity aiR for Review

How did they do it?

• Cut attorney time in half and saved roughly $30,000 compared to technology assisted review (TAR) workflows
• Performed strategic, issue-level analysis across productions, surfacing insights that shaped case strategy
• Freed attorneys to begin motion practice and fact development weeks earlier

A Complex Case, a Massive Data Set, and No Margin for Delay

Foley & Lardner LLP regularly manages large-scale discovery for corporate clients navigating high-stakes disputes. A recent multi-party matter presented extraordinary data challenges: over 3 million documents at the outset, aggressive deadlines, and a lean attorney team tasked with delivering fast, defensible results.

After targeted search terms and date filtering, Foley refined the universe to 500,000 documents requiring analysis. Traditional workflows, including technology-assisted review (TAR), would have required significant time from multiple attorneys – resources the team did not have.

Senior counsel, having previously witnessed the accuracy and transparency of Relativity aiR, championed aiR for Review as the only realistic, high-quality path forward.

Turning a Massive Review into a Strategic Launchpad

Foley deployed two curated prompts to guide aiR for Review’s analysis and conducted targeted prompt validation to ensure accuracy before applying the tool at scale. aiR’s relevance and key-document predictions quickly surfaced the most important material. The team also issue coded a subset of the documents to understand themes across the data set.

The entire workflow – culling, prompt iteration, validation, and full-scale analysis – was completed in under a week.

But speed wasn’t the only breakthrough. What truly reshaped the litigation was what that speed enabled. Attorneys gained back more than half the time they would have spent on TAR-driven workflows. They reallocated that time toward motion practice, early fact development, and shaping case strategy far earlier in the timeline.

Uncovering Intelligence through Cross-Production Analysis

Once the initial review was complete, Foley used aiR for Review in a novel, highly strategic way – one that meaningfully informed their approach to the matter. The team began comparing issue-coded signals across both outgoing and incoming productions, using aiR’s reasoning to identify matches, contrasts, and gaps in the narrative emerging from each party’s documents.

This cross-production, issue-level correlation delivered insights that would have been nearly impossible to uncover manually at this scale.

“Being able to quickly compare issue patterns across incoming and outgoing productions fundamentally changed how we viewed the facts and determined areas of focus. Without aiR for Review, that level of analysis simply wouldn’t have been possible.”
NICK COLE, Director of Litigation Support, Foley & Lardner

A Solution that Met the Moment

For this matter, choosing aiR was not merely a preference; it was the only option that met the project’s needs for speed, quality, and strategic depth.

Foley’s team noted several reasons aiR for Review was the right tool:

• Unmatched Accuracy: Senior counsel had firsthand confidence that aiR’s outputs were more consistent and more insightful than both traditional review and TAR, based both on past projects and the validation from this case.
• Resource Efficiency: With limited resources and a massive dataset, aiR allowed a small team to do the work of a full review staff – without sacrificing quality and defensibility.
• New Strategic Advantages: aiR didn’t just classify documents; it presented opportunities to better evaluate incoming productions, revealing insights that materially shaped early case strategy.
• More Client Value: The firm delivered results that were faster, more accurate, and more cost-effective – an uncommon trifecta in discovery.

As Foley has expanded its use of aiR for Review across large, time-sensitive matters, attorneys have seen a consistent shift in how reviews are staffed and paced. By surfacing critical documents and issues earlier in the process, teams are able to move into higher-value strategic work much sooner — a pattern that has repeated across cases using aiR.

“Reviews of such enormous size normally derail timelines. aiR for Review changes that entirely. It allows us to shift quickly into the strategic work that really drives better outcomes instead of losing weeks to first-pass review.”
RICHARD FLANNERY, Senior Counsel, Antitrust, Foley & Lardner