Martha Dawson (Preston Partner and head of the Document Analysis and Technology Group – DATG) had done an excellent job in continually improving the process used for electronic discovery through creative processes like going to a contract pool of review attorneys instead of using expensive associates and partners to do a review. While Marty was not a litigator, he was on the Preston Gates and Ellis committee that managed the dealings with the Microsoft account and he was well aware of the demands from Bill Neukom (formerly Microsoft General Counsel) to help stop the exponential increase in the cost of electronic discovery. They said sure and showed him an example.
He asked whether the same tool could be used to process emails.
As Marty was watching the demo, he connected this potential solution to the explosion in costs for electronic discovery for litigation that Microsoft was encountering. SPIRE worked on expensive SUN workstations and was essentially a single user system for individual analysts. SPIRE was a tool developed for the CIA, NSA, DIA, and FBI to analyze documents and display the documents in an abstract three dimensional space. As Marty sat through six hours of presentations by one group after another, he was enthralled with the SPIRE tool (now IN-SPIRE) and related projects.
#LEGACY ALDUS PHOTOSTYLER SOFTWARE#
The visits were set up as part of PNL’s efforts to make other Washington software industry professionals aware of their work so that they might make connections to their innovations which might then be commercialized. In the early spring of 2000, Marty Smith (partner at Preston Gates & Ellis) was on his semi-annual visit to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNL) in Richland, WA, which is operated as a part of Battelle. Marty was at PNL as part of his role with the Washington Software Alliance (now the Washington Technology Alliance). This article was aimed at promoting Preston Gates and Ellis (now K&L Gates) as much as it helped to promote Attenex. The public story of how Attenex came into being can be found in the AmLaw Technology article “Seattle Sleuth” published in the Winter of 2003. Like all good companies, you try to shape and control your story.
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