Predicitive Coding in Andrew Peck's Court

In what appears to be the first federal case to adopt the use of predictive coding, Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Monique Da Silva Moore, et al., v. Publicis Groupe and MSL Group, ordered the parties to adopt a protocol for e-discovery that includes the technology as implemented by Recommind's Axcelerate product.

Paul Neale, CEO of Doar Litigation Consulting and Gene Klimov, vice president of discovery consulting, advised the plaintiffs on developing a protocol for predictive coding that used quality controls by both parties to teach Axcelerate what is relevant and irrelevant through iterative sample sets. Peck agreed that "the [predictive coding] system is only as good as the training that it gets."

See LTN's technology editor Sean Doherty's analysis .

Image by Clipart.com

What Does an E-Discovery Project Look Like?

As a lawyer, do you find the concept of project management as alien to your practice and education as the notion of providing your own IT support? In a follow-up to his LTN article, "Right-Thinking in E-Discovery Project Managment," Brett Burney trains his focus on what an e-discovery project looks like to breed a little more familiarity with the process.

As a point of departure, he looks at the Electronic Discovery Reference Model group's Project Management Framework for a broad outline of the logistics necessary to navigate each categorical task in the EDRM.

If you're still in the weeds, he suggests tools that break down the broad framework into more manageable tasks, honing in on tools that are specifically focused on managing e-discovery projects, including Framework from Wave Software, Project Matrix and PHIGRID from eClaris, and Exterro Discovery Workflow. "The goal of all of these products is to give you a standard platform to manage your e-discovery projects and reuse workflows that have been tried and are true," writes Burney.

But remember that the best framework and the most tried-and-true platform fall down without proper communication and documentation. For the full picture, read "Anatomy of an E-Discovery Project."

Guidance Buys CaseCentral

Pasadena, Calif.-based Guidance Software has announced its acquisition of CaseCentral, bringing customers software and services from collection to review in an end-to-end e-discovery platform, report LTN's Sean Doherty and Brendan McKenna.

Before it bought CaseCentral, Guidance had used third party vendors during trial preparation to conduct further review and analysis of its customers' collected data. With San-Francisco-based CaseCentral's focus on hosted review, Guidance can now analyze, cull, and review collected data, de-NISTed using EnCase Forensics, it says.

Guidance will acquire CaseCentral for $17 million under the terms of the agreement and anticipates the acquisition will add $10 million in software-as-a-service growth in 2012.

Read the story, "Guidance Buys CaseCentral to Make End-to-End E-Discovery Platform."

Logos courtesy of Guidance and CaseCentral

Hitting the 'Like' Button for X1 Social Discovery

With Facebook membership passing 800 billion and Twitter at more than 300 million users, that's a lot of data to rummage through. Small wonder that social media discovery is an emerging area of interest for e-discovery practitioners and providers.

Enter X1 Discovery with its flagship product X1 Social Discovery, which was on display at the exhibit hall at LegalTech New York a few months after its October launch.

As John Waters writes, the software was "designed specifically to collect, index, search, and preview social media content generated by the three most popular systems: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn." Among its vaunted features are its ability to preserve chain of custody with social network content and to capture and preserve its metadata.

Waters takes the product for a test drive in his article for LTN, "X1 Social Discovery Collects Data in Social Networks."

Image courtesy of X1 Discovery

EDD in the EU: Proceed With Caution

"Don't assume anything about technology systems when your firm is working outside of the United States," was one insight reporter Evan Koblentz gleaned from the LegalTech New York panel, "A GC's Nightmare: A U.S. E-Discovery Request Into Europe."

The risks and problems that follow from wrong assumptions about multinational e-discovery were laid out in detail by panelists from both the U.S. and the European Union.

"The biggest concern that I have is the competing interests of the U.S.courts versus the EU privacy concerns," said Craig Cannon, discovery counsel at Bank of America.

Read the full article, "LegalTech Panel Examines E-Discovery Challenges in Europe."

Cloud Cover at LegalTech

Seeking an open, affordable way to collect data from the cloud? LTN Technology Editor Sean Doherty suggests you look to the left of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model — where information management enters the e-discovery picture.

ZyLab, a child of the marriage of e-discovery and storage repostories, offers open, non-proprietary data archiving in Extensible Language Markup format. It now offers the first in a series of "Cloud Collectors" that captures email from Microsoft Exchange Online, as well as messaging applications such as Gmail and Windows Live Hotmail.

Guidance Software also offers collection from cloud-based email systems such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail, in version 4.4 of its Encase eDiscovery. The addition of a new connector framework supports direct data collection from more than 30 information repositories and email archives such as IBM.

For more detailed cloud coverage from LegalTech, read Doherty's full report, "E-Discovery Collectors Get Cloud Cover and Other Updates From LTNY."

Image: Clipart.com

Microsoft Deputy GC Thinks Globally

Where does Microsoft's deputy general counsel identify a major untapped market for e-discovery? If you answered global corporate ethics you're more market-savvy than most or you were in the crowd for Deputy GC John Frank's keynote speech at LegalTech New York.

As Evan Koblentz reports, Frank pointed out that it was a government official's bribery request that led a Tunisian fruit vendor to set himself on fire, touching off the Arab Spring of popular revolts against unjust rule. "A repressive regime can control a limited number of western journalists, but having everybody out on the street corner with a smartphone can change the regime," Frank said.

But he added, noting overseas bribery at companies such as Alcatel-Lucent and Siemens, "The business practices of international companies too often support the same corrupt governments and the same corrupt business practices [that] people protested." And things don't appear to be getting any better.

New E-Discovery Software Heads to LegalTech

Visitors to LegalTech New York's vendor floor can check out eagerly anticipated e-discovery releases.

AccessData is adding an early case assessment module to its Summation product, while Clearwell promises a more tranparent predictive coding. Other e-discovery players bringing out their wares include BIA, debuting social media collection for its TotalDiscovery.com, and bit-level litigation hold from Index Engines.

Check out the whole story, "E-Discovery Software Leads the Charge to LegalTech New York," from LTN reporter Evan Koblentz.

Are EDD Sanctions Tough Enough?

Freelancer Jason Krause ponders the question here, discussing Pension Committee and other recent cases, here.