In this Q&A, Kelly Twigger discusses her company’s recent rebrand from eDiscovery Assistant to Minerva26, new AI innovations, and more insights on the legal tech industry.
At this year’s Legalweek, the Nextpoint team joined EDRM to host a “Live from Legalweek” webinar to share highlights and insights from the conference. Brett Burney, Nextpoint’s eLaw Evangelist, conducted interviews with friends across the industry to share their perspectives as well. We’ll be featuring the interviews in this Q&A series to highlight the news and ideas that emerged from Legalweek 2025.
First up in the series is Kelly Twigger, the founder and CEO of Minerva26 – formally known as eDiscovery Assistant. Brett and Kelly discuss the major rebrand of her company, modern ediscovery challenges like Slack collections and hyperlinked files, and other insights about ediscovery and Legalweek.
About Kelly Twigger
Kelly Twigger is a visionary leader at the intersection of law and technology, bringing over two decades of experience as a practicing attorney, software developer, and entrepreneur to her role as CEO and Founder of eDiscovery Assistant. Her unique blend of legal expertise and technological innovation has earned her recognition as a Fastcase 50 Honoree for legal innovation and an ABA Woman in LegalTech, positioning her as a driving force in the LegalTech industry.
Kelly’s expertise and influence in the field are further evidenced by her co-authorship of “Electronic Discovery and Records and Information Management,” a seminal work widely used for eDiscovery education across the country. She served as an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Law School, hosts the influential “Case of the Week” video series, and is a long-standing member of the University of Florida eDiscovery Conference planning committee. These positions reinforce her status as a trusted authority in the field and provide valuable industry connections.
Kelly’s tenacious approach to business, honed through years of litigation and strategic planning, ensures that eDiscovery Assistant stays ahead of market trends and consistently delivers value to its users. Her ability to “think six moves ahead” in legal strategy translates directly to her business acumen, positioning the company for long-term success and market leadership.
About Brett Burney
Brett is a lawyer, journalist, podcaster, speaker, and author on ediscovery and legal technology. With over 15 years experience as an independent technology consultant for law firms and corporate legal departments of all sizes, Brett is an essential part of Nextpoint’s industry-defining thought leadership and educational content production.
Before founding his ediscovery consulting practice, Brett supported lawyers at the law firm of Thompson Hine LLP, where he worked with litigation teams in building electronic document databases, counseling on ediscovery issues, and managing the technical responsibilities of presenting evidence at trial. Now, he helps corporations and firms of all sizes navigate ediscovery issues and minimize litigation costs by making smart decisions about legal technology.
In addition to serving as the eLaw Evangelist and eDiscovery Solutions Architect at Nextpoint, Brett also provides expert guidance as VP of eDiscovery Consulting with the Nextpoint Law Group.
Brett:
So I am here with Kelly Twigger, who I would always introduce as Kelly Twigger from eDiscovery Assistant, but no longer as of yesterday. Okay, so tell us the story, Kelly. This is now Minerva26. From my standpoint, it’s really not much of a surprise, because you were doing so much more than what a lot of people knew with the case law. I knew you did the education aspect, and so many other tools that you’re working on. So this just feels like it’s a bigger wrapper around everything that you’re doing.
Kelly:
Yeah, I’d say Minerva26 is really the big rebrand of the company. I started building eDiscovery Assistant back in 2012.
Brett:
I remember that. I remember.
Kelly:
When nobody had adopted ediscovery, yet, right? It was still like, we’re not really going to go there. And now we’ve grown so much, and the technology has grown so much, and what we include in the tool is so much. Our tool is a strategy tool. Lawyers rely on case law and rules, their knowledge and experience, and what the client tells them to formulate strategic decisions. So what we’re doing in Minerva26 is giving you those strategy elements, and now we’ve really amped up the education and training component of that.
So although you can look at the case law, you can also go into our academy and see, how does Slack work? What does collection mean from Slack? What are the issues that I need to be thinking about in Slack? I’m also the principal at ESI Attorneys, which is our ediscovery law firm, and we take all of our insights from that work and put them in the platform. We are just trying to think of new ways to deliver on that.
What’s really exciting about Minerva26 is that we are doing lots of AI integration, both on the front end and on the back end in terms of process and scale. We’re also going to be building our own Ask Minerva, which will be our RAG fine-tune implementation, which I think is what a lot of the AI assistance that you’re seeing is. So that’ll be something that will be out in late Q3.
We’ve also just announced that in June, we’ll have on-demand approved CLE in the academy as well. So the goal is that you can both get really practical information, but you can also use it toward your CLE, which is always a problem to get really good practical CLE. So those are some of the things that we’re doing.
Brett:
Can I just say, I think what I get excited about is that I know you, I’ve known you for so long. And while you provide the practical side, since you do have such a wealth of knowledge from the legal, substantive case opinion side, I feel like that just merges so well in what you do. That’s what I’ve always enjoyed talking with you about – you can show why you need to know something practical because you can ground it in these opinions that address a certain issue, which I think is important.
Kelly:
Yeah, exactly. The thing about ediscovery case law that is very unique to our subject matter area is that, because the technology is changing constantly, and the judges are having to interpret the rules and the law according to all these new technologies, it is constantly iterating, right? And so it changes every day.
The case of the week that I did last week was on the latest decision from Judge Cisneros in the In re Uber Techs. case. It was another pronouncement that hyperlinked files are attachments where they are relevant, and you will have to come up with a process that works technologically to produce them after the parties have discussions. The court needs to be involved in that, and the parties need to understand what’s happening on that front. But I think that iterative process is what really separates ediscovery from every other substantive area of the law.
Brett:
Good point.
Kelly:
It’s not, “I have four elements of breach of contract, and I’m going to solve those four elements.” It’s a constantly moving target in ediscovery now. So part of the rebrand with Minerva26 is to position the company as helping lawyers manage the process of discovery. So we’re not going to build tools to host data. We’re not going to do that, but Minerva26 is our signature tool. That’s our strategy tool, and then we’ll be building some other pieces to also help manage that process. So we’ll give you those announcements when they come.
Brett:
I’m sure you’ve had to answer this question. I’m guessing 26 is from Rule 26 –
Kelly:
Rule 26, which governs the provisions of discovery.
Brett:
And Minerva?
Kelly:
Minerva is the Roman goddess of law, justice and wisdom, which is exactly what we need in discovery.
Brett:
Emphasis on wisdom.
Kelly:
That’s right. Emphasis on wisdom. Cooperation. You know, the more adversarial we are in discovery, the less we get done.
Brett:
So you still have your voice with Legalweek.
Kelly:
A little bit.
Brett:
You sound great. What are you excited about for this week? It’s only Tuesday right now, and I know you’ve got a lot of meetings and everything. What are you most excited about this week other than your amazing rebrand?
Kelly:
I am most excited about seeing everybody that I love, like yourself. We just ran into Amy Sellars. Just seeing all of my favorite people and being with my like-minded friends where we can talk about the challenges and be able to come up with creative solutions.
I love the opportunity to go see what other technology people are developing. We have a lot of technology developments, sometimes with lawyer input, a lot of times not with lawyer input. So I do love it when I get the opportunity to consult with software companies on what they’re doing and how they make it really work for lawyers, how lawyers think and work. There’s this misnomer that lawyers have one workflow, but if you had five lawyers, there would be 10 workflows, right? It’s just about understanding those pivot points. So I love doing that part.
And we’ve also been putting together strategic partners, because a big part of strategy in discovery is technology, yes, and so you have to be able to understand the rules, the case law, the knowledge and the technology that you can use to get to the answers quickly. And my view is that ESI is an opportunity. A lot of people look at it as a burden. But I think if you approach it with, “I want to get to where I want to get to quickly,” and you know how to use the case law, the rules and the technology to get there, you can do it very effectively no matter what the size of your case is. But the knowledge to do that is the missing component for a lot of lawyers, and that’s what we’re trying to provide.
Brett:
That’s great. Always fun talking with you Kelly.
Kelly:
Thanks, Brett, appreciate being here. Bye.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Learn More from the Legal Tech Experts
Watch the full webinar, “Live from Legalweek,” to hear from more legal tech pros in addition to Kelly and Brett. Plus, stay tuned for the rest of our Q&A series, featuring exclusive interviews from major players in the legal tech space.
WATCH “LIVE FROM LEGALWEEK”
A few months ago, Kelly and Brett gathered with Doug Austin of eDiscovery Today to discuss “modern attachments,” or hyperlinked files – a theme Kelly mentioned in the Q&A. Modern attachments have become a hot topic in the ediscovery sphere. Watch this webinar to get insights on this new data challenge from some of the best legal tech experts today.
