Relativity

Relativity is a legal technology company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 2001 by Andrew Sieja and known as kCura until 2017. It is privately held, with growth equity investors Silver Lake and ICONIQ Growth as significant shareholders, and it is run by chief executive Phil Saunders, with Sieja as founder and Silver Lake partner Joe Osnoss as board chairman.

kCura built the Relativity review platform for litigation support teams and law firms, then renamed itself after the product in 2017 as that platform became a de facto standard for e-discovery. ICONIQ backed the company in 2015 and Silver Lake made a strategic growth investment in March 2021, funding the shift to the RelativityOne cloud and, more recently, the Relativity aiR generative AI review products.

Relativity at a glance:

• Founded: Founded in 2001 in Chicago by Andrew Sieja as kCura, which took the name of its flagship product and became Relativity in 2017.
• Headquarters: Headquartered at 231 South LaSalle Street in Chicago, Illinois, with team members on four continents and offices serving EMEA and Asia Pacific.
• Ownership: Privately held, with growth investments from ICONIQ in 2015 and Silver Lake in 2021; Silver Lake partner Joe Osnoss chairs the board of directors.
• Legal Technology Portfolio: Sells the Relativity and RelativityOne e-discovery platform, the Relativity aiR generative AI products and the Relativity Trace compliance tool.
• Market Focus: Serves large corporate legal departments, law firms, government agencies and litigation service providers, distributed heavily through a partner channel.

What legal teams should know: Relativity is one of the most established vendors in e-discovery, which makes it a comparatively low-risk procurement choice, and most corporate legal teams buy it through a certified partner rather than direct. Buyers should budget for implementation and hosting costs, which vary widely by partner, and check whether the aiR modules are priced separately.