LighthouseIQ

IQ Answers

Key ResultsEarly fact-finding with IQ AnswersAvoided weeks of traditional attorney work, resulting in massive savings and a crucial head start.AI-Powered quality control with IQ IssuesAchieved 90% alignment with IQ Issues and counsel’s coding on initial document sample, eliminating the need for a second sampling round.Custom AI Summarizations for second-level reviewDesigned and deployed a custom solution in one week to accelerate second-level review with comprehensive document summaries and key language excerpts.The Challenge: Anticipating Regulatory Scrutiny and Conquering Complex DataA large, multinational consumer platform received a regulatory information request from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) consumer-protection concerns involving a core offering. Facing a high-stakes investigation, the company’s outside counsel needed to move quickly to interrogate a large volume of data, be proactive with anticipated follow-up requests, and ensure defensibility from the outset.The matter presented two time-sensitive challenges:Fact-Finding: To meet critical regulatory milestones and get ahead of the FTC, counsel needed to immediately interrogate the data and establish key facts. This urgency was compounded by the desire to identify and vet potential custodians in anticipation of the FTC expanding the scope of the information request. Tailored Solutions: A substantial portion of the relevant data was sourced from proprietary exports from two non-standard enterprise collaboration tools. These non-standard CSV-based exports were incompatible with industry-standard eDiscovery chat processing tools, creating a major roadblock for efficient and defensible review.In total, Lighthouse received roughly 4TB of raw data, which translated to just under 1.4M documents requiring processing.The Solution: A Two-Pronged Approach with AI and Custom EngineeringLighthouse partnered with outside counsel to deploy a strategy that leveraged advanced AI for early fact-finding and custom data engineering to normalize the most challenging data sources.IQ Answers: Accelerating Early Case Assessment and Fact-FindingTo address the volatile custodian list and scope, counsel utilized IQ Answers. This allowed the case team to move beyond the traditional “hunt and peck” method of keyword searching and instead use natural language prompts to interrogate the data early and efficiently.With guidance from the Expert Search team, counsel was able to get at their specific goals for early assessment including:Further targeting key data types crucial to the response.Identify potential custodians who were not yet formally in scope.This proactive, AI-driven exploration eliminated the need for weeks of manual attorney review typically required for initial fact-finding. Based on feedback from counsel, Lighthouse determined that one IQ Answers query and response saved 15-20 hours of review time. Thus, the use of IQ Answers allowed outside counsel to realize a savings of more than $400K in the initial case assessment phase.IQ Issues + Summarization: QC and Second-Level EfficiencyOnce the initial culling processes reduced the document population to 47K documents for review, IQ Issues was used as a Quality Control (QC) measure against first-level reviewers.QC Validation: Lighthouse provided a 200-document sample for counsel’s issue coding and generated AI issue codes for the same set. The results showed a remarkable 90% alignment for Responsive documents, significantly exceeding the typical target of 80% alignment. Because of this high precision, the typical second round of sampling was deemed unnecessary.Custom Enhancement: The case team requested a more robust output for second-level review—a comprehensive document summary and key language excerpts to support the issue codes. Leveraging close client collaboration and responsiveness, the Lighthouse team designed a custom solution on an accelerated timeline that added:A full Document SummaryKey Language Excerpts tied directly to the relevant issues.This customized approach was applied to 38K+ documents in the review corpus, and improved the efficiency of the second-level review by an estimated 38%, resulting in an estimated savings of $300K. On top of this, since alignment between the case team and IQ Issues was so high, it’s reasonable to believe these issue codes could eliminate the need for first-level review entirely, which could result in an additional savings of $45K, if not more depending on review volume.Custom Data Engineering for Modern Collaboration DataReceiving proprietary collaboration data in non-standard CSV exports rendered these data types incompatible with typical processing tools. To overcome this, the Lighthouse Innovation Data Engineering team developed a custom, defensible chat processing workflow to handle proprietary CSV exports.The engineered workflow consolidated, cleaned, and structured the data into 24-hour conversational transcripts while embedding attachments and preserving all necessary metadata. This process allowed the complex, non-standard chat data to be transformed into defensible, review-ready datasets, overcoming a significant roadblock that would have stalled the matter for weeks. As an added benefit, this new workflow is now a reusable framework for future custom conversational exports.The Result: Proactive Defensibility and Accelerated ReviewBy combining an array of LighthouseIQ modules with custom data engineering, the corporate team was delivered proactive, high-confidence results:The strategic use of IQ Answers for early fact-finding allowed counsel to anticipate regulatory needs and prepare for potential scope expansion, resulting in $400K+ in savings and a crucial head start.The deployment of IQ Issues provided a high degree of confidence and quality control over the first-level reviewers, evidenced by the 90% alignment score. Moving forward, based on this high alignment, first-level review could be completely eliminated, resulting in $45K in savings.The quickly developed custom summarization solution reduced second-level review time by over a third, resulting in an estimated savings of $300K.The innovative custom chat processing workflow successfully unlocked previously incompatible data sources, turning a complex data roadblock into a defensible, reusable, and review-ready asset.The partnership ensured both the in-house team and their law firm maintained control over the data investigation, allowing them to approach the FTC with confidence and a clear, defensible response.

IQ Answers

The ChallengeOne of the Top 10 largest law firms in the US needed to help their client quickly respond to a U.S. Department of Justice Civil Investigative Demand. The initial keyword searches returned 532K+ documents (with families) from a starting set of 2.1M+ documents—still far too large to review linearly on the government’s timeline. Counsel needed to shrink the set defensibly and reach the key facts fast to bring about a good result for the clientThe SolutionIQ AnswersFast Insights for the Legal TeamLighthouse deployed IQ Answers, a retrieval-augmented, natural-language search tool, over ~406K documents, after removing non-inclusive email threads, junk files, document level duplicates (starting from a ~71K-document trial index on the two key custodians). This allowed the team to ask plain-English questions and get answers grounded in the data—with citations, source notations, and highlighted excerpts, no cap on questions, and no pre-culling—so counsel was able to move from data to evidence in minutes/hours rather than weeks. Expert Led Key Document IdentificationThe Facts That Mattered, FastLighthouse’s expert search team of linguists and data scientists ran Key Document Identification across the three CID priority topics provided by counsel. Working outside the linear review flow, the team surfaced ~315 curated key documents and delivered them as a precise, clutter-free package—arming the team with easily consumed evidence to build the narrative and accelerating speed to knowledge.Keyword ConsultingA Smaller, Defensible Review SetRather than accept the original term hits at face value, Lighthouse’s Key Word Consulting team analyzed and refined counsel’s searches, cutting the population from 532K to 114K documents (with families)—defensibly eliminating 420K documents, a 78%+ reduction. For an investment of just $4.5K, the work avoided at least $420K in downstream review expense (a conservative $1 per document) coupled with $45K annual hosting savings—roughly a 104x return, and more than the matter’s entire Lighthouse spend to date.Hosting SavingsFewer Documents Need to be Hosted in a Review WorkspaceWith the more focused search results, review hosting reductions amount to an estimated $45K annual savings.

ChallengeWhen a whistleblower allegation placed a company’s future in question, outside counsel needed answers immediately. Executives had to determine whether the allegations were credible, whether fraud or criminal exposure existed, and whether the business could continue operating—all within days.The investigation involved more than 126,000 documents spanning email, collaboration platforms, messaging applications, and business records. A traditional review would have required weeks before attorneys could begin developing meaningful legal strategy.With critical business decisions on the line, an Am Law 50 firm partnered with Lighthouse to rapidly identify the evidence that mattered most while maintaining a defensible investigative process.SolutionUsing IQ Case Strategy, Lighthouse and outside counsel replaced the traditional review-first approach with a question-first investigative methodology.Rather than reviewing every document equally, counsel first identified the legal and factual questions that would determine the outcome of the investigation. Lighthouse then transformed those questions into a structured investigative workflow that rapidly surfaced the evidence most relevant to each issue.Approximately 150 targeted investigative questions guided the analysis across more than 126,000 documents, including email, WhatsApp, Signal, Discord, ChatGPT conversations, and other business records.As the investigation progressed, Lighthouse continuously identified, organized, and synthesized the most relevant evidence while attorneys refined investigative priorities and validated findings. Instead of spending weeks reviewing low-value material, counsel could immediately focus on the documents that informed legal strategy and business decisions.IQ Case Strategy delivered a comprehensive merits assessment that included:Executive summary of key findings, risks, and unresolved questionsPrioritized hot documents supporting and challenging each allegationIssue-based evidence summaries with integrated chronologiesStructured evaluation of competing factual theoriesDocument-level investigative coding and supporting data indexThe result was more than a streamlined document review—it was an evidence-based strategic assessment that enabled counsel to quickly evaluate risk, advise leadership, and determine the appropriate path forward.ImpactThe investigation produced meaningful business results in less than three days.Completed the investigation in under 72 hoursReduced 126,000 documents to approximately 1,100 critical recordsGenerated more than $335,000 in estimated cost savings compared to traditional review methodsEnabled counsel to rapidly assess the credibility of the allegations, potential fraud, criminal exposure, and operational riskEquipped executive leadership with evidence-based guidance to make critical business decisions within days rather than weeksThe Lighthouse DifferenceHigh-stakes investigations demand more than faster document review—they demand earlier insight, stronger strategy, and defensible outcomes.IQ Case Strategy combines AI-powered analysis with the expertise of legal strategists, investigators, and technologists to transform complex legal questions into actionable intelligence. By identifying the evidence that matters most at the outset of an investigation, legal teams can assess risk sooner, test legal theories more effectively, and provide business leaders with the confidence to make informed decisions.Whether responding to whistleblower allegations, regulatory inquiries, internal investigations, or complex disputes, Lighthouse helps organizations reduce review time and cost while accelerating the path from information to insight.When every decision matters, IQ Case Strategy empowers legal teams to move beyond document review and deliver what clients need most: actionable intelligence that drives confident, strategic decisions.

The Challenge A national healthcare provider faced 14 related matters across 9 jurisdictions, with 11M documents dispersed across multiple vendors, databases, and case teams.Redundant Review Is a Data Problem, Not a Legal OneWith a traditional eDiscovery model, each matter would have required reprocessing, rehosting, and/or rereviewing large portions of the same data. Data insights and work product would be siloed inside individual matters and within disparate legal teams. This would severely escalate costs and drive inconsistent outcomes and operational drag.The SolutionLighthouse recognized that the problem wasn’t just data volume. It was the absence of a system that could learn across matters and apply that intelligence forward. With LighthouseIQ, counsel could take a fundamentally different approach—using a centralized, AI-backed data system guided by expert judgment, where decisions, insights, and work product flow seamlessly between matters and legal teams.AI-Backed ResultsReduced 11M documents to 90K requiring reviewReused 100K coding decisions across 14 related mattersAvoided duplicate hosting, processing, and review of 1.2M documentsEnabled instant productions from a national database with LighthouseIQ$650K in cost savings delivered with consistency and defensibility built in, not traded offBuilding Human-Guided AI at Multidistrict ScaleStep 1: An AI-Powered Data Repository, Expertly DesignedLighthouse migrated all 11M documents (from both Relativity and non-Relativity sources) into a single LighthouseIQ hosting environment. Lighthouse experts designed the repository architecture upfront to support cross-matter reuse and long-term litigation strategy.Lighthouse eliminated duplicate hosting, processing, and review of 1.2M documents.Step 2: AI Normalization and Cross-Matter MatchingWithin the repository, LighthouseIQ normalized documents and applied proprietary hashing to identify duplicates, near-duplicates, and previously reviewed content across matters. Lighthouse experts validated how matches and inherited decisions were applied, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and defensibility across jurisdictions.Lighthouse reused 100K coding decisions across matters.Step 3: AI-Guided Prioritization, Expert Review StrategyLighthouse review experts designed one strategic review plan for all 14 matters that lowered costs and maximized data reuse and cross-matter insights. Using cross-matter intelligence, IQ Review identified 150K documents (from within the 11M housed in the repository) that were most likely to be responsive across jurisdictions.This dataset was published to the national review database and fully reviewed by an experienced Lighthouse review team (trained by Lighthouse review managers) to categorize each document for both national and jurisdictional responsiveness. After review, Lighthouse copied this strategic production set to each jurisdictional database. This approach kept hosting costs drastically lower for each individual matter, while providing all local case teams with an immediate first production, well ahead of production deadlines.Out of 11M documents, just 90K required human review.Step 4: Continuous Learning Through a Human-in-the-Loop Feedback CycleAfter production, expert-approved coding decisions were fed back into the repository. LighthouseIQ automatically matched those decisions to corresponding documents across matters, creating immediate efficiencies while preserving expert intent. With every matter, the system became: more informed, more consistent, more cost-effective.‍The Results: A System That Gets Smarter Over TimeBy using LighthouseIQ, a sprawling, multidistrict litigation environment was transformed into a reusable intelligence system. The client achieved significant cost savings and faster productions, without sacrificing judgment, consistency, or defensibility.In the process, LighthouseIQ delivered $650K in cost savings.

The ClientThe client operates at the forefront of AI innovation while simultaneously navigating heightened regulatory oversight and increasingly complex civil litigation.The Legal ChallengeOver the past two years, this client has faced a sharp increase in high-profile, high-stakes litigation and regulatory investigations. Matters often involve novel technologies, modern collaboration and messaging platforms, and compressed response timelines.This was creating sustained pressure on traditional eDiscovery models and legacy discovery tools, which proved to be inefficient and difficult to scale at the speed required. Repeated data recollection, redundant review, and inconsistent issue identification also introduced unnecessary costs and risks. The client needed an approach that could apply intelligence across matters, learn from prior work, and deliver defensible results quickly.The Lighthouse SolutionWe implemented a LighthouseIQ-driven eDiscovery program capable of scaling across the client’s litigation and investigative portfolio, prioritizing the client’s need for speed, consistency, and defensibility. Through the rapid design and deployment of this framework, Lighthouse has helped the client:Meet aggressive discovery and regulatory obligationsReduce eDiscovery risk across multiple concurrent mattersSave hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a few monthsMaintain consistency, defensibility, and institutional knowledge across a growing litigation portfolioAs new matters arise, the program continues to scale, leveraging prior AI-driven insights rather than restarting the discovery process with each engagement.Pillars of the LighthouseIQ eDiscovery ProgramIn 2024, Lighthouse launched a programmatic eDiscovery initiative for this client that was grounded in what would become the LighthouseIQ platform and application suite. The objective was to move beyond point solutions and instead create an adaptive framework that continuously improves as new matters arise. The pillars of this framework and the results achieved in just the first year are below.Reusing Work Product at Scale with LLM-Backed TechnologyLighthouse built a centralized data repository designed specifically to support work product reuse across litigation. Each matter is maintained in its own siloed workspace, where LighthouseIQ is used to:Identify when prior work product is relevant to new mattersReuse review decisions, key documents, and privilege determinationsControl reuse across matters while maintaining strict, matter-level silos for privilege and confidentialityThe result:Reduced unnecessary recollection and reprocessing across litigation by over 10 terabytesSaved tens of thousands of dollars by minimizing duplicative attorney review while improving cross-matter consistencyAccelerating Fact Development Under Regulatory DeadlinesThe impact of LighthouseIQ has also been pronounced in matters requiring rapid issue and document identification under regulatory pressure. In a recent regulatory inquiry, outside counsel had only days to identify critical facts from hundreds of thousands of documents. This timeline would have been impossible to achieve using traditional search and review technology.Lighthouse deployed IQ Case Strategy to:Rapidly analyze hundreds of thousands of documentsSurface the key documents tied to three core legal issuesPrioritize results for attorney review within daysThe result:Reduced review costs by more than $100,000Completed the regulatory response within two weeksDelivered the documents attorneys needed within days (vs. the months it would have taken with traditional search tools), giving them more time to work on data-backed legal analysisBuilding a Defensible Forensics FoundationLighthouse also designed and implemented a centralized forensics collection program spanning all of the client’s major data sources, including:Google Vault and Google DriveSlackMobile devicesNon-standard messaging and social applicationsThe forensic program addressed nuanced challenges that arise in modern data environments, including the preservation, collection, and treatment of hyperlinked attachments, particularly where contemporaneous versions are unavailable. Lighthouse’s forensic team improved collection efficiency and defensibility by:Developing a core forensics playbook to standardize data retrieval across mattersDesigning targeted collection workflows that leverage usage and access patterns to prioritize files actually accessed by custodians, significantly reducing over-collectionThe result:Improved collection consistency across matters while minimizing unnecessary data processing and review via a repeatable forensic program

Background Regulators issued a sweeping investigation tied to a global company’s high-profile acquisition. The scope and timeline were demanding: more than 30TB of data required analysis, risk assessment, and production in less than 30 days. A defensible, scalable approach that met regulatory requirements while controlling cost, mitigating risk, and ensuring flawless execution was non-negotiable. The Lighthouse Approach LighthouseIQ eliminated unnecessary human review, decreased scope early, surfaced risk faster, and executed at scale without errors. Key elements included: IQ Review used AI to surface only what truly required human judgement. In parallel, a 300-person managed review team was rapidly ramped to handle the doc volume. IQ Priv accelerated privilege identification and used generative AI for privilege log drafting and names list creation. Key documents identified via modeling in parallel to review. Cross-matter analytics and work-product reuse across a parallel antitrust litigation Custom operational workflows, including M365 cloud attachment linking and secure reuse repositories All of it executed in parallel. No bottlenecks. No rework. Results 10TB, including 20M images were produced with M365 cloud attachments as required by regulators in under 60 days. This delivery boasted an 100% error-free production result and $20M in total cost savings. Cost avoided:

When an engineering partner suddenly pulled out of a major project, a global manufacturer needed answers fast. Was the termination allowed under the contract, or had the partner crossed a line that could lead to litigation? The company’s law firm had to move quickly. A deadline was approaching to file a termination claim, but that was only the first step. Once the partner responded, the firm expected tough follow-up discovery. To be ready, they needed to understand the full story before the dispute escalated. The firm identified and collected more than one million documents across fifteen custodians, most in the United States. While this is a large but not uncommon volume of data for such a complex investigation, the real challenge was determining how to interrogate it quickly without iterating dozens of times on keywords as is the case with traditional keyword search. As one attorney explained, “Most of the time, we don’t know the exact words people used and everyone uses different language anyway.” Every guess costs time, and every missed variation risks overlooking critical evidence. The Lighthouse ApproachLooking for a faster and more reliable approach, the firm used IQ Answers directly inside their Relativity environment, starting with Microsoft 365 data from the U.S. custodians. IQ Answers is not a general-purpose chatbot. It’s an enterprise AI tool that leverages large language models and other AI and ML models to answer questions but is grounded solely in the documents in your case. Instead of building complex keyword searches, attorneys simply asked questions and received clear, document-backed answers. Using this approach, the team conducted an early case assessment without relying on months of manual review. Once all documents were loaded, they used the AI to explore the data directly. Over the course of less than two months, the team asked 182 natural-language questions. That process captured 6,325 documents, of which the team flagged 835 as potentially important. To confirm the results, the firm conducted a second-level manual review of those documents. Attorneys validated 190 documents as key evidence and identified another 130 as potentially key. Notably, 832 of the 835 documents directly related to the 14 issues identified for the case. By combining AI-driven discovery with focused human review, the team turned an overwhelming volume of data into clear, actionable insight—delivering results in a fraction of the time required by traditional methods. Based on the intelligence IQ Answers delivered, the firm made a critical strategic decision: they opted against a full review. What would have been months of traditional document review and significant expense became a targeted, AI-driven investigation that gave them exactly what they needed in pre-litigation.

BackgroundThe client faced a high-stakes Hart Scott Rodino (HSR) Second Request with tight compliance deadlines under FTC oversight:7.5M documents (7.8TB) were collected in 2 phases from 28 custodians collected across email, collaboration platforms, mobile data, and hard copy sources.Differentiated responsiveness standards between groups of custodians, requiring tailored review strategies.The matter was re-opened months later and additional documents requested.The Lighthouse ApproachThe team implemented both IQ Review and IQ Priv, combining AI analysis with disciplined managed review execution. Key elements included: AI-supported relevance review and a team of 30 contract attorneys for documents that required eyes-on review Privilege review, privilege log and names legend automation via AIAI image analysis for visual and scanned contentTwo separate AI models were trained to address differing responsiveness criteria across custodial groups, ensuring precision without sacrificing defensibility.ResultsLighthouse successfully processed 7.5M total documents across both collections. Because our AI models remain largely stable even with new documents, analysis of the second phase of collection was able to start immediately. LighthouseIQ powered analysis meant that only 2,500 contract review hours were needed in total. Using AI insights, our contract review attorneys maintained high review velocity across responsiveness, privilege, and PII review streams. The approach delivered FTC-ready defensibility under close regulatory scrutiny while enabling rapid adaptation to an evolving regulatory scope. Through expert coordination across legal, technical, and review teams, the engagement delivered predictable, consistent performance even under compressed timelines and shifting requirements.

EDRM 2.0 reflects a fundamental shift in discovery: The intelligence that makes document review faster, more focused, and more valuable now begins long before document review itself.For more than two decades, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model has provided a shared framework for understanding how information moves through discovery. Its latest evolution reflects how AI and modern data are shifting where and how that work gets done.EDRM 2.0 introduces a stronger "left lean" toward early assessment and targeted data scoping. It groups Identification, Preservation, Collection, and Processing within a unified Data Acquisition framework and positions Analysis as a continuous activity across the discovery lifecycle.© 2026 EDRM (EDRM.net) Original modified by Lighthouse.These changes reflect how purpose-fit AI is enabling legal teams to pull intelligence out of data earlier, rather than waiting until data is loaded into a document review platform.Better Intelligence Before ReviewAI platforms integrated with purpose-fit AI applications can now help legal teams examine data earlier and with greater precision. Before review even begins, legal teams can now use purpose-fit AI tools and workflows to:Answer targeted questions across even the largest datasets Identify and narrow the likely responsive population before loading it into a review platformIdentify and analyze images and other complex content Identify and classify potentially privileged, confidential, highly sensitive, or issue-relevant content These early insights help counsel make more informed, faster decisions about discovery scope, litigation strategy, and the right path for different types of information.Sending Better Data into ReviewEDRM 2.0 continues to position Review as the nexus where legal relevance and strategic decision-making converge. However, its increased emphasis on upstream analysis shows the growing opportunity to make review more focused and valuable.When legal teams can understand and categorize datasets earlier, they can send a smaller, better-understood, and more strategically relevant population into the review environment. This reduces unnecessary hosting and review costs while allowing attorneys to focus on the nuances and decisions that require more legal judgment. It can also significantly reduce the volume of documents that require attorney review, while making review of the remaining documents faster, more consistent, and more focused.Connecting Intelligence Across the LifecycleThe evolution of the EDRM reflects where discovery is heading. The future of review will be shaped both by what happens inside the review environment and by how effectively legal teams develop intelligence before review and carry it forward through the matter.Realizing this opportunity takes more than applying one AI tool to every problem. Different tasks call for different technologies and workflows, along with the expertise to select the right approach and validate the results.Learn how LighthouseIQ applies purpose-fit, legal-grade AI across the matter lifecycle, supported by experienced professionals and defensible validation, to reduce unnecessary review, accelerate fact development, and strengthen case strategy.

IQ Case Strategy

IQ Answers

IQ Review

IQ Answers

IQ Answers

IQ Case Strategy

IQ Answers

IQ Answers

IQ Answers