E-Discovery Analytic Technology: How does it work?

At this year’s 8^th Annual-Advanced eDiscovery Institute Event, a panel entitled “Behind the Black Box: Decoding Advanced Analytic Technology” was held for legal professionals to learn about eDiscovery technologies in simple terms. As moderator Gilbert O. Greenman stated, “…to explain the black box to you, I have none other than people who can claim to have invented the black box, tested the black box, and analyzed the black box”. Panelists included Founder and CTO of Digital Reef, Steve Akers; Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Susan Dumais; Professor at the University of Maryland, Dr. Douglas W. Oard; and CTO of Recommind, Dr. Jan Puzicha.

Concept searching, near-duplicate clustering, document clustering, predictive coding, and related analytic technologies facilitate eDiscovery, but many there are many concerns attorneys have about the ability to explain these technologies. This panel of experts peeled back the cover of these tools, and explained in simple terms how they work in practice. The panel of experts looked at both where on the EDRM the black box technology fits in, and what exactly the black box is. While introducing the panel moderator Gilbert Greenman joked, “…the slides may be the only thing this panel agrees upon.”