Technology Advantage

In one sense, “proportionality” is about balance: weighing the pros and cons of an action in order to decide if that action is justified. For example: Is the cost worth the potential benefit? When applied to law, the concept of proportionality is central to the extent, limits and reasonableness of discovery in litigation. In this article, I’ve included some tips and tricks of the trade that your e-discovery professional (whether that be a project manager, e-discovery attorney or other specialist) can offer to help you work towards that elusive notion of proportionality.

I started my career in outsourced litigation support nearly 20 years ago when copying and scanning paper was the bread and butter of our work and e-discovery was still fledgling technology. While the vast majority of my experience came on the vendor side, I made the move to a law firm about four years ago. This blog offers some perspective on vendor v. law firm life and the skills, technologies and support needed to be successful at each.

This is Part Two of a continuing series on ESI basics. In this series, we cover some of the terms used most often on the tech-side of e-discovery. In Part One, my colleague, we provided an overview of PSTs. You can find that article here. Whether this is an introduction to you or a refresher, and whether you are an attorney, member of an in-house team or data analyst, this information may come in handy in your practice.

Endurance running, specifically trail races and ultra-marathon events, is a favorite pastime activity that I have enjoyed for seven years. I have run races as short as five kilometers (3.1 miles), one longer than two hundred miles, and most at some intermediate distance. The mindfulness and problem-solving skills demanded to complete some of these events (for non-professionals!) translate well to the E-Discovery world.

This is part two of a series on my journey to appreciating TAR. Part one addressed defined TAR, described how it worked and provided tips on when you should consider using TAR. Part two addresses the TAR process, advantages and disadvantages of TAR, and my current thoughts on using the technology. 

Recently, I began work on a complex litigation case that had millions of documents to review with many moving parts and quick deadlines that made completing assignments daunting, to say the least. We determined that simply running targeted searches to find this evidence was not the best approach, in part because the issues were broadly defined and had multiple subparts, and in part because of the sheer number of documents in the database (over 2.5 million records). As an alternative, we decided to utilize technology assisted review or “TAR” (also known in the industry as predictive coding). What follows is my impression of the tool.