“The move” in my article’s title maybe taken to refer to the advances in the take-up of predictive coding in the last few months. In fact it is me who is moving– I am on a California road trip with my wife and, inevitably, not catching every development on predictive coding or anything else.
Three stories have caught my eye, however, from Twitter, in the relatively few periods when I have access to an Internet connection.
One is Recommind’s appointment of Hudson Legal as a certified predictive coding provider, combining Recommind’s technology for early case assessment, predictive analytics and predictive coding solutions with Hudson Legal’s project management, review logistics and document review teams. This is a formidable, and wholly logical, pairing.
The second story also involves Recommind, being a report by Monica Bay of Legal Technology News of a discussion called Debunking Myths about Predictive Coding. This was presented by ALM and involved Howard Sklar of Recommind and David Kessler of Fulbright & Jaworski, two of the ablest proponents of the use of technology generally and predictive coding specifically. Monica Bay is one of the more concise writers on these subjects and I simply refer you to her account Panel Debunks Predictive Coding Myths without any attempt at summary on my part (I’m allowed this kind of cop-out when I am on holiday).
The third story is about OrcaTec, another respected provider of predictive coding software. This has not been widely reported (I got it from a story headed Predictive coding finds ‘smoking gun’ on Charles Christian’s Orange Rag, that universal bran-tub of legal technology intelligence)
It concerns a focused use of OrcaTec’s technology to find one or two key documents which, once discovered, allowed the lawyers to settle the case with a couple of phone calls. This seems a rather more useful purpose for the technology than merely collecting together thousands of documents which no one is ever going to read but which make the lawyers feel good (in their pockets as well as in their consciences).
I see that OrcaTec has attracted a substantial investment. I think that if I had money to invest, I would be putting it into eDiscovery technology providers rather than law firms at the moment.
