E-Discovery Technology

New technologies are being created and utilized every year. The most significant developments lately are the rise of chatbots - software applications that allow for online chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, without any direct contact with a human operator. Currently, the chatbot garnering the most attention is OpenAI’s ChatGPT program. This article will focus on this technology and how it works either for or against the E-Discovery review process.

COVID-19 has changed the world we live in. People are working from home, students are attending classes online, and all group events are handled remotely. For those of us who work in the E-Discovery field things have changed also. While we are facing new challenges, we are also finding interesting new opportunities to conduct our work more efficiently, and everything we are learning will inform our work even after the pandemic is over. 

Last fall, I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel at the 2019 Relativity Fest entitled “Why Lawyers SHOULD Be Luddites.” It was a lively discussion about whether lawyers should be luddites, whether robots would be taking attorney jobs, should attorneys learn to code, and how to future-proof yourself. Opinions were split but what struck me the most was that a majority - if not all – of the attendees wanted to learn how to future-proof themselves. In this blog I offer tips on how to take advantage of technologies to do just that.

Given that data processing is a technical activity, how involved should legal teams be in this phase of discovery? In my opinion, case teams do not need to be experts about document processing tool mechanics (that’s what WE are for!). However, in my experience, legal teams that spend the effort to develop four specific skills end up with robust document databases, efficient reviewers and happy clients. 

Mobile devices are an absolute necessity in our everyday life. When it comes to litigation (or potential litigation), our beloved devices are usually subject to discovery as they may contain information that is relevant to proving or disproving a case. As a result, when developing a data collection strategy, mobile devices must be considered. Mobile devices may now be as valuable as the more typical sources of information, namely personal computers and network locations, and with this newly-recognized discovery relevance comes a potential for trouble.

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.