LegalTech West 2015 keynote recap
This post was written by Ian de Heer, senior technical client manager at Thomson Reuters
Given the consistency with which security tops the list of concerns of legal IT professionals, it should come as no surprise that the keynote panel discussion at LegalTech West 2015 centered on just that. Industry professionals including Ruby Zefo from Intel and Ronald Sarian of eHarmony, discussed corporate strategies and concerns about privacy and security. Matthew Zinn, general counsel for TiVo, would not have been eager to talk about data collection 15 years ago, but with changes in consumer expectations around privacy and the gathering of personal data, he doesn’t consider their data collection very invasive, and it provides huge benefits in customizability and user experience. Zefo urged consumers not to be afraid of data collection and referenced recent Big Data triumphs such as the Polio Eradication initiative and anti-fraud and anti-terrorism efforts. All panelists agreed that securing data was imperative, but as Zefo pointed out, having a plan to deal with a breach is just as important. When it comes to credit card data, Zinn recommends not acquiring the information at all, and instead holding a token and letting a third party secure that data.
Technology Assisted Review is another topic that has been on the minds of legal technologists for some time. During the Plenary Session the panelists, including Maura Grossman and Gordon Cormack, two of the e-discovery industry’s leading researchers, revealed their findings when they compared various types of Technology Assisted Review. The clear leader seems to be Continuous Active Learning (CAL). Unlike Simple Passive Learning or Simple Active Learning, CAL consistently provides larger relevant document findings while allowing fewer documents to be reviewed. It’s not just a matter of cutting costs either. Cormack stressed their findings that human-only review resulted in correctly identifying only about 70 percent of the responsive documents in a given review set. TAR consistently outperforms that regardless of what method you use. Grossman finished up by saying that while TAR is not required by the courts, it is certainly allowed, and the court does not show sympathy to burden of cost claims when firms refuse to use it, so if you can save money and time using TAR, you most certainly should.
