Reliance on manual and keyword search methods alone is increasingly seen as inadequate for searching large volumes of information. There are concerns about the accuracy and efficiency of these methods, especially as compared with more advanced search techniques. This book provides a set of perspectives on predictive coding and other advanced search techniques, as they are used today by lawyers in pursuit of e-discovery, in investigations, and in other legal contexts, such as information governance. There is something in this book for everyone--novices, seasoned e-discovery practitioners, litigators, business lawyers, and technologists. It is meant to appeal both to practitioners who are seeking basic knowledge of what predictive coding and other advanced search methods are all about, as well as to those members of the legal community who are "inside the bubble" of e-discovery already and wish to gain further insight into the latest thinking on advanced search techniques from leading lawyers, judges, and information scientists. The book may also be read by lawyers who do not consider themselves litigators or e-discovery practitioners, but who wish to apply a knowledge of smart analytics in other legal contexts.
About the Author: Jason R. Baron serves as Of Counsel in the Information Governance and eDiscovery Group at Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP in Washington, DC, and as co-chair of the Information Governance Initiative, a vendor neutral consortium and think tank. Between 2000 and 2013, he served as the first appointed director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, and before that as a trial lawyer and senior counsel for a dozen years at the Department of Justice. While at DOJ, Mr. Baron served as lead counsel of record for seven years in the White House "PROFS" e-mail case, Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President (D.D.C.). Among other faculty appointments, he has taught an e-discovery course for PhD and Masters candidates at the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies. He co-founded the NIST TREC Legal Track, a multi-year international information retrieval project devoted to evaluating advanced search methods in a legal context. He also co-founded the DESI (Discovery of Electronically Stored Information) international workshop series on topics related to advanced search methods. Mr. Baron has served as an Editor-in-Chief on several commentaries published by The Sedona Conference(R), including The Sedona Conference Best Practices Commentary on the Use of Search and Information Retrieval Methods in E-Discovery (2007 and 2013 eds.), and The Sedona Conference Achieving Quality in E-Discovery Commentary (2009 and 2013 eds.). He also has authored or co-authored numerous scholarly publications, including three published in the Richmond Journal of Law and Technology: "Information Inflation: Can the Legal Profession Survive?" (2007), "Law in the Age of Exabytes: Some Further Thoughts on 'Information Inflation' and Issues in E-discovery Search" (2011), and "Finding the Signal in the Noise: Information Governance, Analytics, and the Future of Legal Practice" (2013) (reprinted in this volume). Mr. Baron serves on the advisory boards of the Georgetown Advanced E-discovery Institute and the Cardozo Data Law Initiative. He has previously served as chair of the DC Bar E-discovery & Information Governance Committee, on the Board of Directors of ARMA International, and as co-chair of the steering committee of The Sedona Conference Working Group 1. Mr. Baron is a 2011 recipient of the international Emmett Leahy Award for his outstanding contributions and accomplishments in the records and information management profession, as well as the Justice Tom C. Clark Outstanding Government Lawyer award given in 2013 by the Federal Bar Association. The American Lawyer magazine named him one of six "e-discovery trailblazers" in its 2013 issue devoted to "The Top 50 Big Law Innovators of the Last 50 Years." He received his BA magna cum laude wth honors from Wesleyan University, and his JD from the Boston University School of Law. Michael D. Berman is a partner at Rifkin Weiner Livingston, LLC, in Baltimore, where he concentrates in commercial litigation and ESI issues. Previously, Mr. Berman spent seven years as the Deputy Chief of Civil Litigation at the Office of the Attorney General of Maryland, was a partner at the Baltimore firms of Tydings & Rosenberg, LLC, and Kaplan, Heyman, Greenberg, Engelman & Belgrad, P.A., and a clerk for The Hon. R. Dorsey Watkins, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. He teaches a three-credit, ESI seminar at the University of Baltimore and Maryland Schools of Law, where he is an adjunct professor. Mr. Berman chaired the Maryland State Bar Association committee that proposed the ESI Principles of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. He is a past chair of the Litigation Section Council, Maryland State Bar Association, and a former co-chair of the Maryland Bar Association's Federal District Court Committee and the American Bar Association's Litigation Book Publishing Board. Some of his publications include: M. Berman, C. Barton, and P. Grimm, eds., Managing E-Discovery and ESI: From Pre-Litigation Through Trial (ABA, July 2011); Author, "The Duty to Preserve ESI (Its Trigger, Scope, and Limit) & the Spoliation Doctrine in the Maryland State Courts," 45 U. Balt. L. Forum 129 (2015); Co-author, "Referenda in Maryland: The Need for Comprehensive Statutory Reform," 42 U. Balt. L. Rev. 655 (2013); Co-author, "Discovery About Discovery: Does The Attorney-Client Privilege Protect All Attorney-Client Communications Relating To The Preservation Of Potentially Relevant Material?," 37 U. Balt. L. Rev. 381 (2008); Co-author, "Proportionality In The Post-Hoc Analysis Of Pre-Litigation Preservation Decisions," 37 U. Balt. L. Rev. 413 (2008); Co-Author, "Commentary: With ESI, difference between federal, state rules," The Daily Record (June 17, 2016); Author, "When Does a Litigation Hold End?," Digital Discovery and e-Evidence (Bureau of National Affairs (Oct. 2009); Author, "General Adverse Inference Instruction For Intentional Breach Of Duty To Preserve--Goodman v. Praxair Services, Inc., Digital Discovery and e-Evidence (Bureau of National Affairs, July 2009); Author, "Tips to Avoid Mistakes with ESI Vendors," ABA Technology for the Litigator (Summer 2009); Author, "Motions to Compel ESI Denied," ABA Litigation News (Fall 2009). Mr. Berman has been a regular lecturer at national and local ESI programs, including the Maryland Professionalism Center, Inc., and the Judicial Institute of Maryland, both created by the Court of Appeals of Maryland. A few other examples include: Presenter, "Managing Ethical Landmines in Electronically Stored Information," (National Disability Rights Network, Training & Advocacy Support Center, Annual Conference, June 2012); Panelist, Access Data Users' Conference, "Data Governance and e-Discovery: Flip Sides of the Same Coin" (Las Vegas, May 2012); Presenter, Stevenson University "Forensic Symposium: eDiscovery--Digital Hide and Seek" (Apr. 2012); Presenter, "The Relevance and Risks of Evidence and E-Discovery for Everyday Practice," (Albuquerque, N. Mex., Dec. 2011). Mr. Berman served four years in the U.S. Army, where he attained the rank of Captain and was a paratrooper. His awards include the Army Commendation Medal, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, and the National Defense Service Medal. Mr. Berman received a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MA from the University of Maryland-College Park, and a JD from the University of Maryland at Baltimore. Additional information may be found at http: //www.esi-mediation.com/resume/. Ralph C. Losey is a Principal of Jackson Lewis, P.C., a labor and employment law firm in the United States with over 800 attorneys. He is the firm's National e-Discovery Counsel in charge of electronic discovery services and training. Mr. Losey also heads up the firm's Litigation Support Department, which, under his leadership, the firm outsourced to a major vendor. Mr. Losey personally performs the predictive coding work in multiple document review projects each year and supervises and consults in many others, including in the Da Silva Moore case, where predictive coding was first approved by a court. Mr. Losey has also competed in, and won, a document review contest and research project supervised by a major university. He was able to classify 1.7 million documents, on his own, in 64.5 hours. In 2015, and again in 2016, Mr. Losey led a research team at the NIST Text Retrieval Conference (TREC), where he participated in the Total Recall Track to demonstrate his hybrid multimodal method of predictive coding. His published reports for the TREC Total Recall Tracks can be found at one of Mr. Losey's educational websites, MrEDR.com. Mr. Losey has concentrated in electronic evidence and discovery since 2006, at which time he started and ran the e-discovery department at Akerman Senterfitt. In 2010 he joined Jackson Lewis. Prior to 2006 Mr. Losey handled a variety of commercial litigation, insurance, and technology cases, including one of the largest Qui Tam cases in history. Mr. Losey has been a computer hobbyist since 1978, and ethical hacker since the 1980s, at which time he created several original game and music software programs for his children. He also established and operated his law firm's IT department from the early 1980s to early 1990s. In 2015 Mr. Losey was a finalist for the LegalTech CIO of the Year Innovation Award. In 2016 he was included in Best Lawyers in America in three fields: Electronic Discovery and Information Management Law, Information Technology Law, and Commercial Litigation. He was also one of the 33 lawyers in the United States included in the 2016 Who's Who in Litigation, Electronic Discovery. Mr. Losey has written over two million words on law and technology subjects since 2006, including over 60 articles on predictive coding. In 2006 he started his well-known blog, e-DiscoveryTeam.com, which later grew to include over a dozen legal education websites. His writings include six books on e-discovery published by the ABA, McMillian, and West-Thompson, including a new book by the ABA releaseded in late 2016, e-Discovery for Everyone. He has also published four law review articles: Predictive Coding and the Proportionality Doctrine, 26 Regent U. Law Review 1 (2013-14); HASH: The New Bates Stamp, 12 Journal of Technology Law & Policy 1 (June 2007); Mancia v. Mayflower Begins a Pilgrimage to the New World of Cooperation, 10 Sedona Conf. J. 377 (2009 Supp.); and Lawyers Behaving Badly, 60 Mercer L. Rev. 983 (Spring 2009). Mr. Losey served as an adjunct professor at the University of Florida School of Law from 2007 to 2011 where he taught both introductory and advanced e-discovery courses. He developed the law school's first online course, which he later spun-off into a private instructional program, e-DiscoveryTeamTraining.com. Mr. Losey has lectured at many CLE events and conferences around the world since 2006 with a focus over the last several years on predictive coding and overall best practices. Mr. Losey received his BA from Vanderbilt University in 1973 and his JD with honors from the University of Florida School of Law in 1979.