Welcome to the debut of the Catalyst blog. We hope it proves to be a useful resource for anyone with an interest in electronic discovery and document review. Over the coming months, expect to see posts here from some of Catalyst’s best and brightest, experts in IT, search, analytics, review, production and processing. We will provide tips, share insights, report news and offer commentary.

We launch this blog on our birthday—Catalyst turned 10 years old at the beginning of this year. Actually, the company got its start in the mid-1990s as part of a large, national law firm based in the Rocky Mountain region. I was a litigation partner there and believed that computers and this new thing called the Internet might help make the litigation process better.

In 1996, my team built some of the first intranet applications to help manage litigation documents and connect the firm’s 10-office network. In 1998, we designed one of the first complex-case extranets to help the oil and gas industry deal with scores of lawsuits involving claims of over $1 trillion. The system allowed more than 300 law firms and corporations to connect, work together and prepare joint defenses. That project proved a huge success and ran for more than 10 years.

By 2000, the firm was getting calls for more of these extranets, even in cases where no firm lawyers were involved. I approached firm management with the idea to spin off the business into a separate entity and to lead that endeavor. We formed Catalyst (then called CaseShare) later that year as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the firm. I continued as a partner of the firm but devoted full time to the business. Fortunately, I was joined by a team of our best and brightest from the firm to help develop our products and start the business.

From that launch in 2000, we’ve come a long way. Back then, a big case might have 30,000 scanned documents, all in English and all based in U.S. courts. Fast forward to 2010, where we just had a case in which we received over a half terabyte of Chinese Taiwanese data from clients who are unlikely ever to come within thousands of miles of our Denver environs.

Today, our company is more than 100 strong and located throughout the United States and the globe. Major law firms and corporations around the world turn to Catalyst to help control litigation and regulatory costs and to make review teams more effective. We cover the heart of the litigation lifecycle—from processing to search, analytics, review, and production.

Along the way, we have learned a lot about litigation support and electronic discovery and we have hired some of the top professionals in their fields—experienced litigators, top technologists, and veteran legal industry professionals. Through this blog, we hope to share some of what we’ve learned and some of our insight and expertise. We also hope to learn from and hear from you. Blogging, after all, is a conversation. So let the conversation begin.