Predictive coding as a tool to reduce the costs of e-discovery review

Here is a guest post from Equivio, an e-discovery software provider, which I have edited and shortened.

“The eDiscovery Institute has released its Judges Guide to Cost-Effective E-Discovery http://www.ediscoveryinstitute.org/JudgesGuide/ detailing strategies for better managing e-discovery costs. Recent emphasis has shifted from the preservation and production of ESI, to managing e-discovery in a more cost-effective manner.”
“Predictive coding is emerging as a useful way to reduce litigation review volumes and costs. With predictive coding software, samples of documents are reviewed by a senior attorney with intimate knowledge of a case. The software uses these samples to identify content patterns and attributes that distinguish relevant and non-relevant documents. Such technologies have been shown capable of retrieving 80-90% of the relevant documents in a collection, versus 20-30% for keyword matching, the most common method.”

Howard Nicols, global managing partner for Squire Sanders Dempsey recently described his firm’s implementation of predictive coding technology. According to Mr. Nicols, 50% time reductions would be typical.”