Catalyst CR 7.1  •  Catalyst Repository Systems  •  (303) 824-0850  •  www.catalystsecure.com  •  One-time setup fee along with a monthly hosting fee. Cost is based on data volume and decreases as storage volume increases.
Pros: Catalyst CR provides an easy-to-use search capability, along with access to millions of online documents, and offers a great selection of customization features that allow you to retrieve and save previous search results for future use.
Cons: More difficult to navigate when performing complicated searches.
Verdict: Catalyst CR receives my recommendation because it’s easily navigated, provides quick access to necessary documents, offers good report capabilities and helps keep large quantities of documents under control.

Review

Catalyst CR 7.1

By Mary Girsch-Bock

September/October 2008 Table of Contents 

Catalyst CR, from Catalyst Repository Systems, bills itself as the first grid-based search, review and analytics platform for electronic discovery, litigation support and regulatory compliance. Providing its products to both corporations and large law firms, Catalyst CR is a Web-based application, and can be accessed wherever there is an Internet connection. Version 7.1 of Catalyst CR contains several new features, including a graphical workflow diagram, along with improved reporting capability.

Catalyst CR is easy to navigate, with an Outlook-style interface that is simple to use. Designed to assist legal teams with the large quantity of discovery documents that often are necessary in complex legal cases, Catalyst CR allows you to search, review and analyze necessary documents.

The default search page contains a search wizard where you can enter simple search terms (e.g., “drug companies”). Using a search connector to link search terms also can be done by simply adding “and” or “or” between search terms. The Form Search option allows you to enter the appropriate information in the field you would like to search. There are over 20 different search fields available, including Author, Comments, DocID, Redacts, Sources, Subject, DocTypes, Reviewed Status and Witness, making it easy to obtain the results you need without extensive results filtering.

The left side of the Catalyst CR main user interface screen contains four tabs: Search, Folders, Review and Admin. Clicking on one of these tabs will display the options available in each of these categories. The Search tab displays the Catalyst CR Search Wizard. Clicking on this tab also will display any search results, provide access to saved searches and provide an option to refine your search results. You can use the Key Concepts feature to see a display of results that contain drill-down capability. Just click on one of the links until you reach the desired results. This feature helps narrow down the displayed results, making the search process more efficient.

Drop-down menus are available in all multiple choice fields, allowing you to easily display all available options and quickly choose the correct value for your search. The Field Filter option allows you to click on a series of drop-down fields to review a list of values from your search results. Text filters display results found in five categories: E-mail, Company, People, Location and Acronym. This is where you can add new documents to Catalyst CR by simply clicking on the “Add New Document” option.

You can search Catalyst CR in over 70 languages, and the Translation Assistant allows you to translate words and phrases to and from 14 languages. Translation on the Fly allows you to machine-translate full documents into 14 languages, including English. Current foreign languages available include Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

There also are a number of helpful specialty search options available that are fully explained in the Catalyst CR user guide. These include the Focus Search option, which allows you to narrow down search results. You also can choose to move between results pages, sort your search results to suit your needs or change the results display on screen. The Folders option is where you can view dynamic folders and access saved searches, as well as private folders, public folders or shared folders. The Review option shows any current projects and displays the stage of each project. The Admin option is where you can add fields, customize the screen display, add default fields to display, set your default display and edit field names, if desired. The specialty search options are helpful in organizing your search documents and are particularly useful when handling multiple documents or searches.

For better document organization, you can utilize the Batch Wizard feature, which will assist you with creating batches. Click on the Batch Wizard option, select the folder you wish to place the batch under, and then access the drop-down menu to select how you wish to group the batches.

Catalyst CR allows you to easily create reports by simply downloading search results from your screen, then editing the results into the desired file format. Supported file formats include Microsoft Excel and Word, HTML, CSV or XML. All searches performed automatically are saved and easily are accessed from the left side of the Catalyst CR screen.

The Assigned Review module, released earlier this year, allows on-site product administrators the opportunity to set up a new review project, create customized workflow, move documents between folders, and create customized reports, graphs and charts.

Catalyst CR is ideal for large law firms that handle a tremendous amount of documents on a regular basis. Catalyst CR not only produces complex search results in a very short period of time, but also allows you to organize documents, which provides better document access for all interested parties.