Intelligent new technology can streamline the e-disclosure process, says Martin Bonney
As lawyers know, in a typical disclosure exercise less than 20% of the documents reviewed are responsive to the case.
The standard approach has been to apply a few basic search terms and then review everything in a linear fashion, slowly weeding the pertinent material from the largely unresponsive whole.
The enormous growth of electronic business documentation, especially e-mail, has made this approach increasingly untenable, on the basis of cost alone.
Accordingly, the courts have begun to stress the importance of proportionality when it comes to the scope and cost of the disclosure exercise.
For lawyers, this brings its own risks—where should the line be drawn? How can lawyers demonstrate that their approach in limiting a review is defensible and has not unduly disadvantaged the other side?
From evolution...
It is here that technology has an increasingly important role to play. Recent years have seen the introduction of a number of new technologies to deal with the growing volume of documents. Three of the most useful have been email threading, near
