The e-discovery platform Relativity brought around 2,000 legal and technology professionals to the Hyatt Regency Chicago earlier this month (October 7–9) for Relativity Fest 2025. The legal data community gathered with Relativity and its partners to discuss how AI will reshape discovery and case strategy through a series of keynotes, judicial panels, breakout sessions, and learning labs.
In the opening keynote, CEO Phil Saunders and the executive team highlighted exciting new developments at the company including:
- Generative AI becomes standard: Relativity announced that aiR for Review and aiR for Privilege, previously paid options which enabled generative-AI-assisted relevance and privilege review respectively, will be integrated into the flagship RelativityOne subscription. Relativity framed this move as a means of democratizing access to powerful AI tools.
- aiR Assist for early case assessment: Saunders introduced aiR Assist, a tool designed to move generative AI “to the left” in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model by unpacking, summarizing, and triangulating documents during early case assessment.
- Rel Labs investment arm: In partnership with the LegalTech Fund, Relativity launched Rel Labs—a clever reference to Nokia’s Bell Labs—to accelerate legal tech development of Relativity’s own product suite, as well as for promising legal tech startups.
In addition to the principal announcements, speakers also shared a number of important updates to existing Relativity products, including:
- Draft with AI: Relativity developed the new Draft with AI feature within aiR for Review, which empowers lawyers to kick-start aiR projects with immediate case context, ultimately reducing friction around initial prompt iteration.
- New analysis types and sensitive business information analysis in aiR for Review: Relativity is adding new analysis types to help users protect confidential business and personal information, empowering users to quickly detect sensitive content and establish appropriate safeguards from the start.
- Generative AI for data breach response: Relativity Data Breach Response leverages AI to speed personal information extraction, cutting review time by 50–70% based on company data.
- aiR for Case Strategy: The enhanced platform supports conversational search, enabling attorneys to ask questions and receive AI-supported answers while the system maintains context. It provides knowledge mapping by extracting key people, terms and relationships, uses AI agents to detect collection gaps, and streamlines deposition preparation by linking facts to witnesses.
While the keynote was primarily forward-facing, it also offered a valuable opportunity to look back as Relativity celebrated the five-year anniversary of its Justice for Change initiative. The program, which provides free RelativityOne access to social-justice organizations, covers more than 250 matters, while processing over 16.2 million documents. Speakers reaffirmed that Justice for Change will continue to provide groundbreaking tools and aid in the mission of those who provide legal support to marginalized communities.
The three-day e-discovery extravaganza concluded with the Innovation Awards, a banquet where Relativity honored the partners and individuals who best exemplified the company’s dedication to excellence, progress, and community.