Litigators in many law departments must periodically send out litigation hold orders (See my post of March 19, 2006.). At the recent LegalTech conference there was material about Atlas LCC, which is software from PSS Systems that “automates and optimizes the legal holds and collection process for the litigation department.” Its capabilities help in-house staff “track, manage, and monitor all legal holds,” “scope and automatically document legal holds,” and “send hold notices and reminders automatically.”
A sibling product, Atlas ERM, assists with enterprise-wide retention policies and schedules (See my post of Feb. 5, 2007 with some data on document retention and destruction; and Sept. 21, 2005 about the many iterations of legal documents.).
Notice how specialized this software is: it targets a niche need in legal departments and joins the pantheon of cottage industries. Eventually, this suite of capabilities will probably become absorbed by matter management systems (See my post of Aug. 5, 2005 about supplements to matter management systems.).