Keeping up with the Jones (LLP)

Articles and blogs emerge daily about new advances in e-discovery and records management technology. The way things are done changes almost as often. However, is the legal industry really keeping up with the technological advancements?

Using the latest technology involves more than buying or upgrading your software. All technology is only as good it’s users. Case in point is predictive coding. On the one hand, user interfaces are improving to the point where most of the bookkeeping involved in analysing the results is hidden away. However, predictive coding initially relies on humans to make critical decisions regarding a set of documents that are responsive and non-responsive. The technology then takes over. The more knowledgeable that the humans are in creating the “seed set” of documents, the more accurate the predictions will be when technology is applied to an entire data set.

This is where the issue lies. As the technology advances, the practitioners who use it need to advance along the way. Legal professionals need to become far more conversant in how the computer algorithms work. Certainly they don’t need to be able to write the algorithms or even develop the statistical models, but they do need to understand some of what goes on “under the hood”.

There are some key questions that legal professionals who must utilize technology to manage electronic evidence in today’s legal environment should be addressing:
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• Are you adopting to new technology?
• Can you use the technology to gain a competitive and strategic advantage, reduce costs, make better business decisions, enhance operational efficiencies, and/or better manage legal projects to achieve defensible results?
• Is your staff properly trained to use technology?
• Does the legal industry provide properly training to use technology?
• Are your legal service providers making sound technology investment decisions and hiring competent subject matter experts?

​Legal professionals need to have in place a well developed technology utilization program otherwise they will fall behind and be overwhelmed with the volume, complexity and high costs associated with managing information and data.