By Michelle Broxman, Senior Consultant, AI & Analytics and Managed Services 

For years, our clients have been asking, “Can’t we just ask the documents?” Now, the answer is yes, and here’s how. CDS’s recent 5 in 5 episode explains how Relativity aiR Assist gives practitioners a more intuitive way to interact with large document populations by allowing legal teams to ask questions in natural language rather than translating every investigative question into search syntax.  

Relativity aiR Assist is not meant to replace the search, analytics, or review tools legal teams already use. Its value is less about making AI accessible for the sake of accessibility and more about enabling legal practitioners to interact with their data directly without needing to think like a technologist. Natural-language interaction makes the technology more accessible to practitioners who spend their days litigating cases rather than working in Relativity. 

Finding the document you need: A real world example 

The CDS team recently spoke with an attorney who had inherited a matter from a colleague and needed to quickly locate a specific contract within approximately 140,000 documents. 

The Challenge

Our client knew what he wanted to find, but didn’t know how the data described it, making text search incredibly challenging. 

The CDS Solution

Instead of trying to anticipate terminology and build increasingly complex text searches, our team built an aiR Assist index and asked whether the contract was present.  

The Results

We received eight documents in response, with the desired contract appearing first. Key takeaway: This entire process was accomplished while we were on the phone with the client. 

AI doesn’t replace traditional search 

Traditional text search and other analytics tools aren’t going away. AI works best as an addition to an established workflow, not a wholesale replacement for everything that came before it. Relativity aiR Assist becomes another tool in the workflow, providing a shortcut when practitioners want to ask questions that don’t naturally translate into Boolean logic, dtSearch syntax, or other structured approaches.  

Changing who can interact with the data 

When lawyers and other subject-matter experts don’t have to translate their questions into technical language, the dynamic between practitioners, technologists, and data shifts. Instead of constructing a query around dates, email addresses, inclusion/exclusion terms, and other search logic, a practitioner can ask a question more naturally, such as whether someone worked at a company before a certain date. Said another way, rather than having to craft a new search, they simply ask another question. 

The bigger implication for investigations and review 

The impact of Relativity aiR Assist goes beyond the individual search. Its real potential is that it can make large data populations feel more accessible and interactive. As teams become more comfortable asking questions of their data, AI may increasingly become part of how they explore a matter, test theories, identify leads, and navigate unfamiliar collections. 

Want to explore what aiR Assist could mean for your next matter? Email the CDS team at .