Autonomy Unveils Industry's First Meaning Based Risk Management Platform for Law Firms

LAS VEGAS, Aug. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ILTA 2010 -- Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software, today unveiled the industry's first end-to-end, meaning-based Risk Management platform for law firms.  The Autonomy Risk Management platform leverages Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL), deployed today in over 2000 law firms, to deliver multiple risk management modules from a single intelligent platform.  Autonomy Risk Management combines Autonomy Client Intake, Conflicts Manager, Legal Hold, Records Manager, and Supervisor to form the industry's most comprehensive platform for helping law firms address the increasingly complex and high-stakes risk management process.

IDOL's unique ability to understand, analyze and act on the meaning of information in any file format and language allows the Autonomy Risk Management platform to automatically understand the inter-relationships within data, and monitor and apply policies against all communications channels.  As a result, law firms transform legacy and manual risk management processes and reduce the cost of owning and maintaining multiple point solutions.  

Managing compliance with regulations and ethical rules, meeting client requirements for data security, and responding to requests from regulators and courts has become progressively more difficult given the increasing volume of electronic data. In addition, the risk management process has become an ever-more complex task given the rise of mergers and acquisitions, globalization, and the increase in lateral hires within the legal industry.

"Law firms today face increased pressure due to stricter regulations, economic pressures and the ongoing duty to uphold confidentiality," said Tom Browne, General Counsel at Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, a leading law firm in ethics and risk management for professionals.  "Electronically stored information poses additional risk, given the volume, uncontrolled distribution and range of formats.  Autonomy's Meaning Based Risk Management platform enables law firms to mitigate these modern risk factors much more effectively than traditional methods."  

Autonomy's end-to-end Risk Management platform helps law firms mitigate risks and optimize the resources associated with this process. This comprehensive platform addresses critical areas of risk within law firms with the following modules:

• Client Intake – It is essential to understand all the information sources and all the inter-relationships between clients to make client management more efficient.  Effective client intake enables law firms to vet the quality of the potential client and matter, a significant source of risk and opportunity cost for the firm.  Autonomy brings advanced automation to this critical loss prevention process, reducing risk and increasing efficiency.

• Conflicts Manager – Firms must quickly and efficiently identify any potential conflict of interest prior to accepting a new business engagement.  Autonomy's Risk Management platform reveals all relationships between the information assets of the firm and public internet resources to risk managers and conflicts analysts. This allows them to more quickly and soundly vet potential new business and lateral hires and reduce the risk of unknown conflicts. Autonomy accelerates the process of obtaining and adhering to waiver letters, ensuring that the firm and their clients have the protection required and billable work can commence quickly, saving time and yielding higher revenue.  

• Legal Hold – The traditional process of tracking hold notifications in a spreadsheet is challenging to maintain, audit and defend in court. Autonomy's Risk Management platform allows law firms to preserve data "in-place" and apply comprehensive preservation policies to any data, regardless of format or location. This ensures compliance with regulations, including the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP).

• Records Manager – Autonomy's Risk Management platform provides attorneys with quick access to the right information at the right time, ensuring accurate client communication when responding to clients.  Ethical walls ensure privacy, while information classification, retention, and disposition management must ensure proactive and efficient management of all client and matter files, regardless of format or location.  

• Supervisor – Failure to properly govern electronic communications can lead to severe and damaging exposure, as well as costly disciplinary actions, sanctions and fines. Autonomy's Risk Management platform enables law firms to apply intelligent policies to all forms of communications, including email, social media conversations, and phone and voice recordings, either between attorneys and clients, or between attorneys in the same firm.  These policies can be applied in real-time, either at the point of send or when they are archived as part of a comprehensive retention and disposition strategy.

"Autonomy's unique meaning-based technology, comprehensive offering, and deep understanding of the law firm market allow us to deliver the most effective platform for managing risk," said Neil Araujo, CEO of Autonomy Protect Legal Systems. "Unlike legacy approaches which rely on manual processes and point solutions, Autonomy provides the first platform that automates the time-consuming risk management process, allowing law firm partners, General Counsel, and CIOs to sleep much better at night."

Please visit www.autonomy.com/riskmanagement to find out more.

About Autonomy

Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, spearheads the Meaning Based Computing movement. IDC recently recognized Autonomy as having the largest market share and fastest growth in the worldwide search and discovery market.  Autonomy's technology allows computers to harness the full richness of human information, forming a conceptual and contextual understanding of any piece of electronic data, including unstructured information, such as text, email, web pages, voice, or video. Autonomy's software powers the full spectrum of mission-critical enterprise applications including pan-enterprise search, customer interaction solutions, information governance, end-to-end eDiscovery, records management, archiving, business process management, web content management, web optimization, rich media management and video and audio analysis.

Autonomy's customer base is comprised of more than 20,000 global companies, law firms and federal agencies including: AOL, BAE Systems, BBC, Bloomberg, Boeing, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Deutsche Bank, DLA Piper, Ericsson, FedEx, Ford, GlaxoSmithKline, Lloyds Banking Group, NASA, Nestle, the New York Stock Exchange, Reuters, Shell, Tesco, T-Mobile, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. More than 400 companies OEM Autonomy technology, including Symantec, Citrix, HP, Novell, Oracle, Sybase and TIBCO. The company has offices worldwide. Please visit www.autonomy.com to find out more.

Autonomy and the Autonomy logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autonomy Corporation plc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Autonomy Corporation plc