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:

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...

THE CASE:

There has been a lot of buzz about the Ernst & Young Inc. v. Essar Global Fund Ltd et al, 2017 ONSC 4017 (CanLII) Ontario Superior Court decision regarding the recovery of eDiscovery document review costs within the context of a bankruptcy proceeding under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). While on the surface it may look like the Court attempted to liken apples to oranges by comparing the dissimilar outsourced review costs borne by each of the Applicant (“Algoma”) and the Defendant (the “Essar Defendants”), this is not the case.

Myths, misconceptions, alternative facts... whatever you want to call them, these days they seem to have a way of working themselves into all facets of our lives, and the eDiscovery industry is no exception. Technology is constantly changing and evolving, and misinformation can lead even the most seasoned legal professional down the wrong path.

Here are six common myths about Technology-Assisted Review (TAR) that we'd like to dispel and uncover the truth once and for all. 

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.

A revolutionary document review offering that seamlessly aligns human expertise with technology efficiency.

TORONTO, ON, CANADA – October 6, 2016 – Commonwealth Legal, a division of Ricoh Canada and the Canadian leader in ediscovery solutions, is pleased to announce the launch of a brand new service offering: Intelligent Review.