As a follow-up the white paper “Software-assisted Document Review: An ROI Your GC Can Appreciate” she co-authored, Kelli Brooks was interviewed in the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel. Kelli Brookes is Principal, Forensic Technology Services, for KPMG LLP in the United States, and member of the California Bar Association.
Kelli highlights the fact that E-Discovery is the most expensive stage of litigation or investigation – and it is occuring at the very outset of it. The two-step process of 1. a human-guided relevance test by technological tools, followed by 2. a human review, provides efficiency and accuracy. Both the human and machine complement each other:
What the software does at the outset is to randomly sample and create document sets[...]. In effect, the software will over time come to a point of stability where it tells you, “Okay, I understand why you are marking something ‘yes’ and why you’re marking something ‘no.’” It can apply that knowledge to the larger population of documents and give those documents a relevance score.
She finally stresses that reduced costs are not the only benefits: a software does not tire the way human reviewer do, time is used more efficiently, and the subject matter experts are getting familiar with the evidence at an earlier stage.
You don’t want to cut cost at the expense of accuracy. What our study found is that you get all of the benefits that you’ve been looking for, reduction in cost and increases in efficiency and accuracy.
