Home » Computers & Electronics » PCs » Computer Software

Lexis Nexis Concordance v. 10

Ranked #6,167 in Computers & Electronics, #118,778 overall

A Review of LexisNexis Concordance v. 10

Concordance is the award-winning product of LexisNexis. Designed specifically for litigation support, it is widely used by law firms, government agencies, and corporations to manage the legal review and production of documents. The word "concordance" implies "harmonious mutual understanding." With its newest release offering Unicode support, Lexis Nexis Concordance finally lives up to its lofty name. This lens is adapted from an article I published with the Technolawyer Community, which publishes a number of excellent news letters, which are free to subscribe to and provide quality content in manageable pieces. I recommend checking it out, if you haven't already. Also, visit my my Legal Project Management blog for a print-friendly copy of the original article.

If you look at this lens and think to yourself, "hey, I could do that!" You're right, you can. Why not sign up for Squidoo now. Please use this link: http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/peaston

Thank you for your support!

Introduction

Concordance 10 is the second major major release of this venerable document and transcript review program since Lexis Nexis acquired it in 2006. Whereas Concordance 2007 (v.9) introduced a revamped user interface, version 10's major improvements are support for Unicode and integration support for E.L. Native Review. The first allows Concordance to go global by enabling viewing and searching international character sets. The second helps Concordance to go native by allowing the user to view documents without having to open them in their native applications or convert them to TIFF or PDF files.

Installation and Database Conversion

Download and installation is as simple as it has always been. I've successfully installed and used Concordance 10 on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and the Windows 7 Release Candidate. Because Concordance 10 uses different registry and install folder locations from Concordance 2007, the user can install both on the same computer, which I did without any issues. Supporting Unicode required Lexis Nexis to make major structural changes to Concordance's database format. Therefore, there is no backward compatibility to older database versions. If the user attempts to open a Concordance version 7, 8, or 9 (versions older than 7 are not supported) database in version 10, the software will prompt the user to convert the database to the new format. Concordance 10 also provides a bulk conversion option. I have not run into any problems when converting databases, but the user should always use common sense and back up databases before conversion.

Going Global

At first blush, Concordance 10 looks exactly the same as version 9. Appearances are, however, deceiving. By supporting Unicode, Concordance is now a useful tool for international discovery projects. I've successfully imported Chinese and mixed Chinese-English text, in various Office formats and HTML files using several character encodings, and have had no issues viewing, indexing, and searching the Chinese text. There are, however, a number of issues users need to understand.

First, before taking advantage of Concordance's Unicode support, the user must have installed the appropriate Windows language packs on his or her computer.

Second, some languages, such as Chinese, do not delineate words with spaces. This makes building an index of words difficult. Concordance does not provide any language-specific, pattern-matching algorithms to determine words when indexing. Instead, each character is considered a "word" for the index. For example, in English, Concordance would add "America" and "Americans" as separate words in its index. A search for "Americans" would not return "America" as a hit unless wildcards are used. When searching in Chinese, however, a search for the two characters that compose the word "America" would also return the Chinese for "Americans" as a hit. For the same reason, the "match whole word only" option in find and replace operations does not work in Chinese and other logographic languages.

Another issue specific to Chinese is that a search using traditional characters will not return hits on the simplified versions of the same characters, and vice versa. This needs to be explained to Chinese-language reviewers who may be used to conducting Web searches, such as with Google, where a search in one form will return results from both forms.

Third, a number of search (e.g. fuzzy search) and data validation features are only available in English.

Fourth, the "Send To" option in the "File" and right-click context menus sends only ANSI text to other applications, meaning Unicode will be lost. Therefore, users can't send Chinese text from Concordance to Case Map, Sanction, Excel or other third-party applications.

As the preceding examples show, an understanding of the language and how Concordance builds its index is important to enable the crafting of appropriate search queries. The help files contain tips and discuss issues with Unicode importing and searching, many of which are language-specific. Anyone working with non-English documents in Concordance should closely read the help files.

Conclusion

In Concordance 10, Lexis Nexis made a number of improvements under the hood that increases performance and security, fixed a number of bugs from version 9, and made some minor interface improvements. These tweaks and fixes might be enough for existing users to upgrade, but it is Unicode support that should attract new users. Finally, Concordance is a tool that can be deployed world wide--so long as you understand the peculiarities of the languages with which you are working.

Share Your Thoughts

What do you think about version 10 ?

You don't need to wait until version 10 is released to share your thoughts. For example, what would you want a review of the new version of Concordance to tell you?

1

Vote Up
Vote Down

reclamebureau amsterdam

Reclamebureau Amsterdam is a full service advertising more...1 point

2

Vote Up
Vote Down

Asian language support, about time! But...

What does it mean to say that Concordance will support more...0 points

3

Vote Up
Vote Down

Concordance 2008 in 2009

With the release of version 10 being pushed back t more...0 points

4

Vote Up
Vote Down

EDRM/XML Support - open standard for load files?

It would be nice if one didn't have to worry about more...0 points

5

Vote Up
Vote Down

I've got to convert my databases AGAIN !?

If you want to work with existing databases, you'l more...0 points

6

Vote Up
Vote Down

Free Microsoft Office Serial Key - Working All Versions

Get Free Microsoft Office Serial Keys that will work more...0 points

7

Vote Up
Vote Down

jewelocean.com

wedding ring sets - real jewelry at affordable pri more...0 points

10

Vote Up
Vote Down

http://www.easyprojects.net/

Easy Projects is a web-based project management tool,
more...0 points

11

Vote Up
Vote Down

http://www.easyprojects.net/

Easy Projects is a web-based project management tool,
more...0 points

Best New Features of Concordance 2008 (v. 10)

What are the best new features of Concordance 2008? Vote on them here or add any that are missing.

1

Vote Up
Vote Down

Unicode Support

It is about time that Concordance supported Unicod more...0 points

2

Vote Up
Vote Down

Document Viewer

No longer will you need to fire up a separate appl more...0 points

3

Vote Up
Vote Down

LexisNexis Law PreDiscovery Integration

The marketing announcements claim that Concordance more...0 points

4

Vote Up
Vote Down

EDRM/XML Support

0 points

5

Vote Up
Vote Down

Supports importing Microsoft Office 2007 files

0 points

6

Vote Up
Vote Down

TRK file is now a relational SQLite database file

SQLite is an embedded relational database file str more...0 points

7

Vote Up
Vote Down

Improved security

Concordance v10 offers the following security improvements:
more...0 points

Links to other Resources for Concordance v. 10

If you know of any other on-line reviews or resources focused on Concordance v. 10, add them here, or vote on those already listed.

1

Vote Up
Vote Down

Andy Kass of Array Technologies shares his first impressions.

Andy Kass of Array Technologies provides a his fir more...1 point

2

Vote Up
Vote Down

Lexbe's Collection of Third-party Legal Software Reviews

Search for other Concordance reviews on Lexbe's co more...1 point

3

Vote Up
Vote Down

LinkedIn: Groups: Sign in Litigation Professionals Concordance Users Group

The most active concordance-specific users group o more...1 point

New Guestbook

  • RichardMillner Oct 3, 2011 @ 11:48 pm | delete
    great site and information.
  • builddecision May 8, 2010 @ 9:35 pm | delete
    As project management is not a too much simple Work. All of us have to be studied about making a project Successful before going real deal. It one is a good lens about taking care of a project.
    Thank you very much.
  • makingdecision May 5, 2010 @ 10:23 am | delete
    While project management not a too much simple job. We require to study about project management before going real arrangement. This one is a pretty lens about taking care of a project.
    Thanks.
  • projectmgnt Apr 30, 2010 @ 1:50 pm | delete
    In my personal learning project management may be not a very much easy Task. We have to learn about project management before going real arrangement. It is a nice article about project management.
    Thank you very much.
Show All

by

paulceaston

I am the Managing Director for Global Colleague's Asian operations.
I have managed high-volume document productions in massive litigations and regulatory... more »

Feeling creative? Create a Lens!

Explore related pages

Related Tags