RelFest 2026: AI Has Fully Moved Into Practice

Last year’s Relativity Fest was about what generative AI could do for eDiscovery. This year was about what it’s already doing. Legal teams are running AI on real matters, defensibly, inside the platform they already trust.

The Lineal team spent the week in Chicago between sessions, workshops, client meetings and a couple of great nights out. Here’s what we saw, what our clients told us, and what it means for the year ahead.

What We Took Away from the Sessions

AI has moved from pilot to practice

Generative AI led the agenda again, and the sessions centered on how teams are using it today: Assist’s conversational investigation and new skills library, case memos drafted in Relativity aiR, and Relativity’s recommended process for running aiR on live matters.

Relativity also showed where the platform is going next. It previewed claiR, a conversational way to work in Relativity that is still in development. And Drafting, built on the Gavel acquisition, brings AI drafting into the platform so teams can produce work product without leaving Relativity. Both make Relativity easier to use for legal professionals who don’t work in it every day.

AI is delivering in privacy work

Some of the strongest use cases came from outside litigation. On PII-heavy projects like DSARs and data breach response, aiR and Relativity’s breach workflows already cut much of the four-corners review once needed to find and extract personal information. Relativity is also building AI that assesses image-only documents for PII. And eDiscovery tools now support breach response, internal and financial investigations, and data-driven legal ops.

All of this work raises the same question: what happens to sensitive data once it goes into an AI tool? Lineal’s Jeanne Somma took that on directly in her session, “Privilege on the Line: Does Using AI Waive It?” More on that below.

Defensibility comes first

Human validation came up in nearly every room, from human-in-the-loop review to privilege over AI prompts to rewriting ESI protocols and protective orders for GenAI. Attendees also wanted to talk about the data itself: making chat, mobile, RSMF and audio/video review-ready, and processing it faster in the cloud.

Privilege on the line

Jeanne’s session was one of the week’s highlights: a friendly debate she led alongside Michelle Six of Gunster. Two teams argued assigned sides across four scenarios, from a junior associate pasting a strategy memo into a free chatbot at 11 p.m. to a contract attorney breaching a protective order.

The main point was clear. An enterprise platform with zero data retention and no training on customer data works like any trusted legal service provider. Consumer tools that retain and train on inputs put protection at risk. As Jeanne’s team put it, a no-waiver provision is not a time machine. Once data sits in a public model’s retention, you can’t get it back.

Jeanne and the panel left the audience with five questions for weighing any AI use:

1. Who can access the input?
2. What is the provider allowed to do with it?
3. How long is it retained?
4. What reasonable precautions were in place?
5. Did the client direct and consent to the use?

After the Sessions End

Some of the best conversations at Relativity Fest happen after the sessions end, so we hosted two evenings to make room for them. Early in the week, clients, partners and prospects packed BIG Bar, with the Chicago skyline as the backdrop. Later, After Hours at Tre Dita brought clients and partners to the St. Regis Chicago for handmade pasta, caviar, gelato and sorbet in one of the city’s most beautiful rooms. The setting raised the bar, but the conversations stayed the point. Two very different nights, one shared priority: the people we work with. Thank you to everyone who joined us.

What We Heard from Clients

Our client meetings covered a lot of ground, and four topics came up again and again.

AI governance. Clients are evaluating Relativity’s AI products alongside a growing list of other AI tools, and the lines between them are blurring. General-purpose AI is moving into discovery, while discovery platforms are reaching into investigations, privacy and legal ops. With that much overlap, teams need one consistent way to vet, approve and oversee every tool that touches client data. Our team brings deep AI expertise across Relativity and the wider market, and we help clients map this new landscape, decide which tools fit which work, and train their people to use them well.

The move to Relativity aiR. Migration from Relativity Server to Relativity aiR (formerly RelativityOne) has been underway for several years. With Relativity requiring all new matters to be hosted in Relativity aiR starting January 1, 2028, everyone still on Server is having that conversation now. For many of our clients, the move reshapes pricing, staffing and how they deliver services, and we’re helping them model that business impact as they plan.

Relativity as the hub. More clients are making Relativity the centerpiece of a fully integrated business platform. That means aligning success metrics with reporting and deliverables, and getting more value from every matter through data reuse and analysis. We support this with AmplifyAI™, our suite of reporting and automation tools built around Relativity, so clients can track results, standardize deliverables and cut manual work across matters.

Smarter investigations. Clients were especially interested in Lineal’s new investigations capabilities, including indexing and natural language querying across structured and unstructured data. Investigators can ask one plain-English question of a database and an email set together and get a faster, more complete answer.

Where Lineal Fits

What we saw in Chicago confirmed that AI is now part of the real work of both the practice of law and the business of law, and those are two different challenges.

In the practice of law, AI tools are already proving their value on specific use cases: a privilege review, a DSAR, a breach response, an investigation. The business of law asks a bigger question. Across an entire practice group or legal operations team, AI has to integrate with core platforms, feed better reporting, and come with a clear understanding of its costs, risks and benefits.

A fully technology-enabled legal business is clearly the future, and that future is here. Lineal helps clients build it. Our AI expertise across Relativity and the broader market, together with our managed review teams, helps legal departments and law firms turn individual tools into a defensible, repeatable business platform.

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About Author

Brian Stempel is a law practice technology executive and thought leader with over 30 years of experience in delivering innovative solutions and services to the legal industry. He is the Head of Customer Advocacy at Lineal where he helps clients solve legal challenges with Lineal’s award-winning AmplifyAI™ platform. Before Lineal, Brian ran eDiscovery operations at Kirkland & Ellis, Paul Hastings, and Debevoise & Plimpton. A life-long learner he also holds executive education certificates from Cornell University, MIT Sloan School of Management, Columbia Business School, and Harvard Business School in various fields related to artificial intelligence, innovation, DEI, and leadership. 

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About Lineal 

Lineal is an innovative eDiscovery and legal technology solutions company that empowers law firms and corporations with modern data management and review strategies. Established in 2009, Lineal specializes in comprehensive eDiscovery services, leveraging its proprietary technology suite, AmplifyAI to enhance efficiency and accuracy in handling large volumes of electronic data. With a global presence and a team of experienced professionals, Lineal is dedicated to delivering custom-tailored solutions that drive optimal legal outcomes for its clients. For more information, visit lineal.com