Samford University's Cumberland School of Law has opened the eDiscovery Institute and Review Center in partnership with cicayda.

A Nashville, Tenn.-based company, cicayda provides eDiscovery software applications, professional managed litigation support services, and eDiscovery consulting and auditing, according to Henry Strickland, Cumberland School of Law dean.

The eDiscovery Institute and Review Center, located in the law school’s Lucille Beeson Law Library, will assist students in legal technology and provide new opportunities in the marketplace, Strickland noted. Recent law school graduates as well as experienced lawyers will be hired by cicayda to staff the center.

“I am excited about this innovative partnership between cicayda and Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law,” Strickland said. “It provides an unprecedented opportunity to bring cutting edge legal technology into our law school. It will provide our graduates employment and experience with fast-changing 21st century legal systems, and it will provide our students and faculty unmatched opportunities to engage with and understand the role of technology in our legal system.”

In connection with the Center, cicayda and the Cumberland School of Law will collaborate on new courses and certificate programs in areas such as technology, information governance, compliance, project management and eDiscovery. Cumberland School of Law and cicayda also may work together on CLE programs designed to educate practicing lawyers in these same areas.

Representatives from cicayda called the partnership a “perfect step with [its] premium delivery of software and services in eDiscovery. The eDiscovery Institute and Review Center marks an historic, immediate step into the future of legal education and a better managed review opportunity for corporations and law firms needing outsourced eDiscovery or contract review.”

“The center features a state-of-the-art review facility with the latest technology, an expert project management staff and top security. The partnership combines one of the USA’s leading law schools and universities with one of the world’s cutting edge legal technology and services companies,” representatives said.

“As a Cumberland graduate, it is thrilling to see my law school take such a leap into the here- and-now of the practice of law. Like a number of law schools looking to the future of a challenging profession, Cumberland is pushing its students to understand business and technology” said cicayda co-founder and CEO Roe Frazer.

He added, “cicayda wants to empower recent graduates to operate fluidly in a legal environment that is being transformed by technology, giving them DIY opportunities heretofore absent. With the marketplace shifting, schools have increasingly come under fire for being out of touch, but Cumberland is challenging this notion by partnering with cicayda to give their graduates a huge advantage and opportunity,” Frazer added.

The eDiscovery Institute and Review Center offers clients a total eDiscovery review solution, Frazer said, including reporting, project management, defensibility and attractive cost.

In 2014, U.S. News & World Report ranked Cumberland School of Law 6th in the nation for trial advocacy. The law school has been on the forefront of providing a practical legal education, Strickland noted. At its establishment in 1847 it pioneered an instructional method based on intensive trial practice. Over the past 167 years this method led the law school to be a national leader in providing a practical legal education, decades before the legal market shifted towards this notion. Today, the law school by design is one of the smallest American Bar Association accredited law schools in the nation. The immediate past dean, John L. Carroll, began reducing class sizes in the early 2000s. The partnership takes Cumberland School of Law’s traditional strength and applies it to 21st century legal practice.