When it comes to legacies, eDiscovery software isn't something to pass down.

No lawyer likes being challenged by opposing counsel on the efficacy and accuracy of a production. For significant litigation matters, few issues give rise to greater cost concerns than that of an incomplete or over-production of documents. The eDiscovery process is one that should be controlled by the best and most-proportionate combination of expertise, process, and technology. While law firms often possess both expertise and process know-how, they may be lacking in a key area: technology.

During Legalweek 2020, Judge Andrew Peck was asked about his take on technology in the legal world. In the Q&A interview published by Law.com, the retired federal judge gave his thoughts on eyes-on review, unarchived data and how there is still work to be done in order to integrate technology into the law.

A lot of time and effort goes into legal document review — many times, more than counsel can handle internally. Between budgetary constraints and lack of resources on hand, legal departments and law firms often have to look to alternative options to handle the often time-consuming review of electronic documents potentially relevant to their matter. 

Historically, legal outsourcing has brought some skepticism. As the Director of Legal and Compliance Solutions, I've heard all sorts of reasons why it's "best to keep document reviews in-house or with external counsel". Today I'm sharing why — plain and simple — this is untrue when you work with Ricoh eDiscovery. 

Here are the top five myths I've encountered about outsourced document reviews and their truths. 

I had the opportunity to speak on the CCCA webinar panel, "Managing the Cost, Risk, and Disruption of eDiscovery in Complex Litigation”, with fellow panelists Andrew Parley, partner at Lenczner Slaght, and Mel Hogg, Associate General Counsel at Ontario Power Generation. Our discussion centered around planning and managing complex eDiscovery projects, including document preservation, collection, and review.

As the "eDiscovery provider" on the panel, my key takeaways from the discussion are these:

Sean Lynch, Manager, Legal Solutions at Commonwealth Legal, shares his insights on the hugely successful Small Law Forum, Evening the Playing Field, at Technology in Practice.

In eDiscovery, lawyers often think they’re experts at crafting keyword search terms to reduce the volume of documents for manual review. Unfortunately, lawyers, and human beings in general, are not good at stringing together Boolean search terms that result in finding all relevant, or potentially relevant, documents.

The problem with developing highly-accurate keyword search terms is often caused by one of two things:

1. The human tendency toward confirmation bias – “the tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms one's pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses”. – The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, p. 233
   
   
2. Humans don’t know what they don’t know, or what I like to call, the “unknown unknowns”.

The result? Keyword search strings inherently miss the "unknown unknowns", and are therefore not complete.

Here's an example...

Small and mid-sized law firms face unique challenges when managing eDiscovery. Data volumes that seem manageable to a larger firm may be overwhelming to a boutique firm or sole-practitioner.

During the course of the 500-day-long U.S. Presidential Election campaign, there has been a great amount of discussion and concern surrounding the review of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Most recently, James Comey, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, sent a letter to Congress indicating that the FBI had “reviewed” all 650,000 documents contained on a newly-discovered laptop owned by Huma Abedin, a close aide to Hillary Clinton.