At this year’s Legalweek, the Nextpoint team joined EDRM to host a “Live from Legalweek” webinar and connect with leaders across the legal tech industry. As part of the series, Brett Burney, Nextpoint’s eLaw Evangelist, sat down with two industry experts to talk about what stood out at this year’s conference – from AI hype to case law deep dives to evolving collaboration in ediscovery. In this combined feature, we're showcasing conversations with two ediscovery luminaries: Kelly Twigger, founder and CEO of Minerva26 (formerly eDiscovery Assistant), and Doug Austin of eDiscovery Today.
Q&A with Kelly Twigger
In this Q&A, Kelly Twigger discusses her company’s recent rebrand from eDiscovery Assistant to Minerva26, new AI innovations, and more insights on the legal tech industry.
BRETT:
So I am here with Kelly Twigger, who I would always introduce as Kelly Twigger from eDiscovery Assistant, but no longer as of yesterday. Okay, so tell us the story, Kelly. This is now Minerva26. From my standpoint, it’s really not much of a surprise, because you were doing so much more than what a lot of people knew with the case law. I knew you did the education aspect, and so many other tools that you’re working on. So this just feels like it’s a bigger wrapper around everything that you’re doing.
KELLY:
Yeah, I’d say Minerva26 is really the big rebrand of the company. I started building eDiscovery Assistant back in 2012.
BRETT:
I remember that. I remember.
KELLY:
When nobody had adopted ediscovery, yet, right? It was still like, we’re not really going to go there. And now we’ve grown so much, and the technology has grown so much, and what we include in the tool is so much. Our tool is a strategy tool. Lawyers rely on case law and rules, their knowledge and experience, and what the client tells them to formulate strategic decisions. So what we’re doing in Minerva26 is giving you those strategy elements, and now we’ve really amped up the education and training component of that.
So although you can look at the case law, you can also go into our academy and see, how does Slack work? What does collection mean from Slack? What are the issues that I need to be thinking about in Slack? I’m also the principal at ESI Attorneys, which is our ediscovery law firm, and we take all of our insights from that work and put them in the platform. We are just trying to think of new ways to deliver on that.
What’s really exciting about Minerva26 is that we are doing lots of AI integration, both on the front end and on the back end in terms of process and scale. We’re also going to be building our own Ask Minerva, which will be our RAG fine-tune implementation, which I think is what a lot of the AI assistance that you’re seeing is. So that’ll be something that will be out in late Q3.
We’ve also just announced that in June, we’ll have on-demand approved CLE in the academy as well. So the goal is that you can both get really practical information, but you can also use it toward your CLE, which is always a problem to get really good practical CLE. So those are some of the things that we’re doing.
BRETT:
Can I just say, I think what I get excited about is that I know you, I’ve known you for so long. And while you provide the practical side, since you do have such a wealth of knowledge from the legal, substantive case opinion side, I feel like that just merges so well in what you do. That’s what I’ve always enjoyed talking with you about – you can show why you need to know something practical because you can ground it in these opinions that address a certain issue, which I think is important.
KELLY:
Yeah, exactly. The thing about ediscovery case law that is very unique to our subject matter area is that, because the technology is changing constantly, and the judges are having to interpret the rules and the law according to all these new technologies, it is constantly iterating, right? And so it changes every day.
The case of the week that I did last week was on the latest decision from Judge Cisneros in the In re Uber Techs. case. It was another pronouncement that hyperlinked files are attachments where they are relevant, and you will have to come up with a process that works technologically to produce them after the parties have discussions. The court needs to be involved in that, and the parties need to understand what’s happening on that front. But I think that iterative process is what really separates ediscovery from every other substantive area of the law.
BRETT:
Good point.
KELLY:
It’s not, “I have four elements of breach of contract, and I’m going to solve those four elements.” It’s a constantly moving target in ediscovery now. So part of the rebrand with Minerva26 is to position the company as helping lawyers manage the process of discovery. So we’re not going to build tools to host data. We’re not going to do that, but Minerva26 is our signature tool. That’s our strategy tool, and then we’ll be building some other pieces to also help manage that process. So we’ll give you those announcements when they come.
BRETT:
I’m sure you’ve had to answer this question. I’m guessing 26 is from Rule 26 –
KELLY:
Rule 26, which governs the provisions of discovery.
BRETT:
And Minerva?
KELLY:
Minerva is the Roman goddess of law, justice and wisdom, which is exactly what we need in discovery.
BRETT:
Emphasis on wisdom.
KELLY:
That’s right. Emphasis on wisdom. Cooperation. You know, the more adversarial we are in discovery, the less we get done.
BRETT:
So you still have your voice with Legalweek.
KELLY:
A little bit.
BRETT:
You sound great. What are you excited about for this week? It’s only Tuesday right now, and I know you’ve got a lot of meetings and everything. What are you most excited about this week other than your amazing rebrand?
KELLY:
I am most excited about seeing everybody that I love, like yourself. We just ran into Amy Sellars. Just seeing all of my favorite people and being with my like-minded friends where we can talk about the challenges and be able to come up with creative solutions. I am most excited about seeing everybody that I love, like yourself.
I love the opportunity to go see what other technology people are developing. We have a lot of technology developments, sometimes with lawyer input, a lot of times not with lawyer input. So I do love it when I get the opportunity to consult with software companies on what they’re doing and how they make it really work for lawyers, how lawyers think and work. There’s this misnomer that lawyers have one workflow, but if you had five lawyers, there would be 10 workflows, right? It’s just about understanding those pivot points. So I love doing that part.
And we’ve also been putting together strategic partners, because a big part of strategy in discovery is technology, yes, and so you have to be able to understand the rules, the case law, the knowledge and the technology that you can use to get to the answers quickly. And my view is that ESI is an opportunity. A lot of people look at it as a burden. But I think if you approach it with, “I want to get to where I want to get to quickly,” and you know how to use the case law, the rules and the technology to get there, you can do it very effectively no matter what the size of your case is. But the knowledge to do that is the missing component for a lot of lawyers, and that’s what we’re trying to provide.
BRETT:
That’s great. Always fun talking with you Kelly.
KELLY:
Thanks, Brett, appreciate being here. Bye.
Q&A with Doug Austin
Brett and Doug, hosts of the Key Discovery Points video series, reunited in person to talk through everything from classic search term disputes to GenAI overload in the Expo Hall. In this Q&A, they dive into the key moments and trends that shaped this year’s conference – and what they mean for the future of discovery.
BRETT:
I’m with Doug Austin of eDiscovery Today. I get to say that every week now, Doug, because you and I record the Key Discovery Points videos. I really enjoy doing that for just a few minutes with you every week. And it’s good because you are such a great resource for case law.
I saw you yesterday in a panel here at Legalweek, I think it was called “Evolving Jurisprudence.” I feel like we ended up talking about some of the same things, Doug, that we had been talking about with search terms. We went back and we’re talking about contract reviewers. It was a great panel, and I really enjoyed it. But I just feel like even now in 2025, we’re still talking about some of the cases and issues that we were talking about several years ago.
DOUG:
Well, ironically, one of the very first cases they talked about yesterday, because they started off with proportionality disputes, was Tremblay v. OpenAI, and it was a search term dispute. It was a little ironic. That’s actually one of the cases we’ll be looking to cover next month on the monthly EDRM webinar, because I’d already eyed that case for coverage, and was aware of it.
It was certainly interesting to get all the takes from the panel. Judge Peck, who I do the monthly case webinar with, was there, and his insights are always interesting. It was an interesting panel yesterday from the standpoint that they covered some cases I knew about and covered, and they covered some cases I didn’t know about. They covered a great case from one of our favorite judges, Illinois Judge Jeffrey Cole, that Judge Peck talked about. And, as usual, he had some pretty direct commentary that made me want to consider going back and covering that even though it was a December case. So, we may have to loop that one into the mix.
BRETT:
You should. That’s great.
DOUG:
That was the first session I attended yesterday. It was a great session, 90 minutes. They really got into discussion of a lot of cases over that time. It was a great way to kick off Legalweek, which interestingly enough, I think it was the first time in many years that I can recall that Monday was basically a full day of sessions. They’ve usually started about midday, which is what I was planning for when I made my airline reservations months ago, and I would get here around then. So, I missed the morning sessions, which I heard were standing room only and people were being turned away. Legalweek is as big as ever in our last year, amazingly enough, here at the New York Midtown Hilton, which is gonna be crazy because we all have so many things we’re used to.
BRETT:
So many memories. I feel like I know exactly where I need to go. I don’t even have to think about where to go. Doug’s referencing the fact that next year, we’re going to be at the Javits center. I know all the bars and all the restaurants and everything around here (Midtown). That’s going to be something. But speaking quickly of Legalweek, obviously, we cannot escape AI, GenAI is everywhere. Any general thoughts? I know you say you missed the sessions, coming on Monday morning. Everybody’s talking about it, introducing it. You walk through the Expo Hall, any general thoughts?
DOUG:
Are people talking about AI this year? I haven’t really seen any of that. [laughter] I already knew it was going to be a big AI conference this year. Every year, or at least the past several years, I’ve done a word cloud from the agenda. I did manage to get it in right before the conference, did it on Sunday, and published it. Last year, I think there were 142 mentions of the word AI in the agenda. This year it was 250, and that didn’t count GAI or GenAI. That was just AI.
It’s really everywhere, and so many sessions have discussions about it. I’ve hit a couple today that have hit some different aspects of AI. One of the things I’ve also been doing today, since I’m a member of the press, I’ve been having briefings with several companies. Some of them, of course, are core ediscovery-type companies, and some of them are really not ediscovery companies, but have AI offerings.
One of the things that I’ve come to realize is that the lines are starting to blur in terms of services and capabilities, in terms of a non-ediscovery company expanding their capabilities and services to do things like ECA or trial prep or what have you. I think some ediscovery companies are expanding their scope outside of their normal realm as well. It’s going to be a much more complex, competitive landscape because, as I’m talking to more and more companies, they’re trying to figure out all sorts of things that they can apply AI to. Some of them are crossing into areas where there are companies that provide those services. Your historical competitors are going to be different than they have been.
BRETT:
It seems like you’re not going to run out of things to write about.
DOUG:
I never do, which is good. That would be bad for my business. [laughter] But yeah, there’s definitely plenty of interesting trends here. It’s always been a madhouse around here as it is every year. The keynote was great this morning with Rob Lowe.
BRETT:
I didn’t know what to expect about that, but it was actually really entertaining.
DOUG:
He was really good. He was entertaining, but at the same time, had some pretty good advice that crosses over from entertainment into legal technology. It’s only the end of Tuesday, so there’s a lot more to come over the next couple of days.
BRETT:
Thanks for taking a few minutes to talk with us, Doug. I always enjoy talking with you. Check out Doug, of course, at eDiscoveryToday.com. Thanks again.
DOUG:
Thank you, Brett. And definitely, I’m sure I’ll see you around about 10 more times before we’re done here. Stay safe.
These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
