Inventus » Industry Articles

Peck’s Predictive Coding Ruling Upheld

rod_roberson — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:44:49 +0000

Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck’s February ruling allowing the use of predictive coding, aka computer-assisted review, to weed through millions of electronic documents in discovery has been upheld by a federal judge. See LTN’s full article here.

Near-Dupe technology could have prevented Google’s Billion Dollar Blunder

rod_roberson — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:41:15 +0000

There have been several articles about Google’s “Billion Dollar e-Discovery Blunder” View Law.com’s here.

Oracle sued Google because the Google Android smartphone allegedly infringes on Oracle’s patents related to their Java programming language. The following email was sent at 11:05 am on August 6, 2010.

___________
Attorney Work Product
Google Confidential

Hi Andy,
This is a short pre-read for the call at 12:30. In Dan’s earlier we didn’t give you a lot of context, looking for a visceral reaction that we got.

What we’ve actually been asked to do (by Larry and Sergei) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome. We’ve been over a bunch of these, that think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need.

That said, Alan Eustace said that the threat of moving off Java hit Safra Katz hard. We think there is a value in the negotiations to put forward our most credible alternative, the goal being to get better terms and price for Java.

It looks to us that Obj-C provides that most credible alternative in this context, which should not be confused with us thinking we should make the change. What we’re looking for from you is the reasons why you hate this idea, whether you think there’s anything we’ve missed in our understanding of the option.

-Tim and Dan
____________

Google withheld the last draft and the “sent” version of the email as privileged and listed them on its privilege log. Unfortunately, eight additional drafts were auto-saved on the drafter’s computer BEFORE he added the “Work Product” and the “Confidential” labels. Those drafts were produced to Oracle and later held not to be privileged as work product or an attorney-client communication.

This situation could have easily been avoided by the use of near-duplicate clustering that would have flagged the additional copies that were missed.Inventus uses Equivio’s near-dupe technologies to measure the data points of the document so that even if the documents contained odd words, misspellings, or other oddities, their scores would be extremely high indicating they are near duplicates and should therefore be similarly coded and not produced to opposing counsel. For more information regarding Oracle v. Google, see Craig Ball’s Blog at http://ballinyourcourt.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/439/#more-439

Gartner Publishes Magic Quadrant for E-Discovery Software

rod_roberson — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:15:41 +0000

Gartner has published the 2011 Magic Quadrant for E-Discovery Software, its first Magic Quadrant report for the E-Discovery software space. The report analyzes 24 different E-Discovery vendors and categorizes them in a chart showing the industry leaders, visionaries, challengers, and niche players, as well as, their “ability to execute” and their “completeness of vision.” kCura (Relativity) and Clearwell were both placed in the “Leaders” quadrant.

E-Discovery Attains Mainstream Media Coverage

rod_roberson — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:39:36 +0000

A recent New York Times article highlights the efficiencies and insights gained with review by e-discovery software such as our partner, Clearwell. The article states that computers are becoming better at mimicking human reasoning in general and that they already bring to light key insights referred to as “digital anomalies” or potential evidence of wrongdoing. To read the entire article which includes a breakdown of the linguistic and sociological categories of advanced search, click here.

Craig Ball Supports Native-Only Reviews and Productions in LTN

rod_roberson — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:54:00 +0000

E-Discovery expert, Craig Ball recently published an article in Law Technology News supporting almost exclusive use of native document format for both review and production. A commonly held belief we frequently hear at Inventus is that TIFF or page-level production format necessary for future use in depositions and therefore entire productions must be delivered in TIFF format. A cost-efficient alternative, however, is to TIFF only files designated for use in depositions and to do so subsequent to production. Because the number of documents actually used for depositions is miniscule when compared to the entirety of a production, this alternative is both time- and money-saving for our clients.

For even more compelling reasons to consider native-only productions, Mr. Ball’s article can be found here.

Sedona Publishes Proportionality Commentary

rod_roberson — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 22:12:48 +0000

The Sedona Conference has published its, “Commentary on Proportionality in Electronic Discovery.” The paper includes six principles of proportionality that practicioners should reference when working through the discovery of ESI.

Principle No. 6 advises: Technologies to reduce cost and burden should be considered in the proportionality analysis. In the commentary to this principle, the paper notes that technology continues to change rapidly and keeping abreast of these changes can be challenging. The paper continues to advise that, ”counsel should remain current in the advancements or engage experts as needed to ensure they take advantage of best practices.”

Download the full paper at Sedona’s website here.

Defending ESI Search Methodology

rod_roberson — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:54:00 +0000

Search methodologies are receiving more and more scrutiny from the courts as best illustrated in Victor Stanley v. Creative Pipe, Inc 2008 WL 2221841 (D. Md. May 29, 2008). And even the best intentioned “keyword search” methods are limited at best, and at worst, risk adverse court rulings.

Download the .pdf to read this white paper from Clearwell that discusses the limitations of traditional search methodologies and the benefits of using technology to ensure defensibility.

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Litigator’s Guide to MetaData

rod_roberson — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:12:26 +0000

File metadata–often referred to as data about data–may function as evidence itself or may be used for authentication of other evidence. In addition, many of the fields populated in any given review platform are in fact metadata: Date Sent, Recipients, Author, Title, etc.

Download the .pdf for a paper by industry expert Craig Ball providing much more insight on metadata.

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Guidance Publishes Best Practices for Preservation and Collection of ESI

rod_roberson — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:49:49 +0000

A defensible e-discovery process begins with preservation and collection. If the proverbial smoking gun is going to be admitted into evidence, it must have an iron-clad chain-of-custody complete with an authenticated MD5 hash value. Guidance Software is the industry leader in the arenas of data preservation and collection. These two white papers offer advice (and warning) to organizations facing the challenges presented by preserving and collecting electronic data.

EDiscovery Collection Best Practices for the Enterprise: http://tinyurl.com/32n7er2

The Seven Best Practices of Highly Effective eDiscovery Practicioners: http://tinyurl.com/34xqco9

Two Surveys on Litigation Trends and Electronic Discovery

rod_roberson — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:34:04 +0000

War stories abound in the field of electronic discovery. Anecdotes about unforeseen quantities of data leading to immeasurable costs and missed deadlines are heard at every industry event.

Here are a two of surveys which formally reflect attorneys’ views regarding the (sometimes painful) process of electronic discovery.

Fulbright & Jaworsk’s Annual Litigation Trends Survey: http://www.fulbright.com/litigationtrends07.

The Joint American College of Trial Lawyers and Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System Final Report on Discovery: http://tinyurl.com/38gpt5x.