Changing Law Firm Economics

Abstract

Litigation has transformed over the past two decades from discovering documents in file cabinets to discovering a smoking gun in an email or twitter post. Nearly all information in today's digital world is created and maintained exclusively in electronic form. This deluge of data has created a document review tsunami. Currently keyword search is the primary means of document retrieval during discovery even though various studies have concluded that keyword search has limited reliability at returning the most responsive documents in a litigation matter. However, condemning keyword search technology is unfair in this context, as keyword search was the only viable means of retrieval until recently. Furthermore, Rule 1 of the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure does not require perfection, instead a balance of efficiency, cost, and justice are taken into account. Fortunately a new toolset called predictive coding is coming online. It stands to offer a solution to the overwhelming amount of data and is likely to transform some component underlying the economics of discovery. With the right business model, law firms and corporate counsel can implement an e-discovery or litigation readiness program using predictive coding, which can simultaneously act as a source of revenue and cut out the middleman vendors, and ultimately lessen the added expenses for the client.