RelativityOne Is Now Relativity aiR, What Does this Mean for PMs?

As I was clicking away in RelativityOne the other day, doing my normal PM thing, I noticed a pretty big shift.

Wait… RelativityOne is now Relativity aiR?

So naturally, I ran to LinkedIn to figure out what I had missed.

Turns out, it’s more than a name change. Relativity says the shift reflects something most of us working in eDiscovery are already experiencing: AI isn’t just another shiny tool being added to our toolkit. It’s becoming part of the platforms and workflows we use every day.

And honestly, I had a little full-circle moment thinking about it.

I didn’t start my career thinking I would end up working in legal technology. I started as a paralegal. Like a lot of people in eDiscovery, I sort of found my way here by realizing that I really liked solving the weird, complicated problems that happen somewhere between lawyers, data, technology, and “we need this by tomorrow.”

Then I discovered eDiscovery and realized there was an entire industry built around exactly that.

Since then, I’ve gone from learning Relativity, to receiving a Relativity Scholars scholarship, to mentoring new Scholars entering the industry. Every ngle day as a Associate Project Manager I was terrified that I didn’t know enough about the technology to be effective, well 3 very short years later I now spending my days managing complex discovery projects and helping other people figure it out.

More recently, I’ve also had the opportunity to serve as a Microsoft Copilot Champion at Lighthouse and spend more time thinking about how AI can actually fit into our everyday workflows.

And that last part is important to me.

Because I am fascinated by AI, but I’m probably never going to be the person who gets excited about technology simply because the technology exists. I want to know what problem it solves.

Can it eliminate something my team is doing manually?

Can it help us get to an answer faster?

Can it make a complicated process easier for a client to understand?

Can it save someone three hours of work that absolutely did not need to take three hours?

That’s the stuff that gets me excited.

For me, the interesting conversation isn’t whether AI is coming to eDiscovery anymore. That conversation is pretty much over. The better question is: What does that mean for the people doing the work?

I don’t think smarter technology makes good eDiscovery professionals less important. I actually think it makes the human side of this industry even more important.

Knowing which buttons to click matters. Understanding the technology matters. Certifications matter. Technical knowledge absolutely matters. But knowing why you’re clicking the button matters more.

Someone still has to listen to a client explain what they’re trying to accomplish and occasionally realize that what they’re asking for isn’t actually what they need.

Someone has to translate between attorneys, technical teams, review teams, vendors, and clients who may all be talking about the exact same problem in completely different languages.

Someone has to recognize when a request is going to require hours of manual work and be willing to say, “Okay, we can do that… but there’s a much more efficient way.”

Anyone who has worked with me knows I have a particularly difficult time keeping my mouth shut when I see someone about to spend a lot of time or money doing something manually that technology can accomplish much more efficiently. (Please don’t tell the sales team.)

That’s also why I keep coming back to the idea that I’m a people person in eDiscovery.

The technology is fascinating, but the people are what make me love this industry.

I love translating the complicated stuff. I love mentoring people who are trying to break into eDiscovery. I love being the person someone feels comfortable asking the “stupid” question that actually isn’t stupid at all. I love finding a better workflow and watching someone realize their job just got easier.

And as AI gets better at handling repetitive, technical, and data-heavy tasks, I think those distinctly human skills become even more valuable. Judgment. Curiosity. Communication. Empathy. Creativity. Knowing when to push back. Knowing when to ask another question. Knowing enough about the technology to recognize what’s possible, while understanding people well enough to figure out what’s actually useful.

AI can help us find answers.

But someone still has to ask the right questions.

So yes, I logged into work one day and discovered that RelativityOne had become Relativity aiR. But the more I thought about it, the more the name change felt like a pretty good representation of where our entire industry is headed.

The technology is getting smarter.

Our jobs are changing with it.

And for someone who accidentally found her way into eDiscovery because she liked solving complicated problems in the first place? I’m pretty excited to see what we get to figure out next!