Tech Circuit: From Broadway to 53rd Edition

Monica Bay

Law Technology News

01-14-2013

At ALM's headquarters in New York City, preparation for our upcoming LegalTech New York 2013 is in high gear. I'm counting the days until Tuesday, January 29 arrives. Yes, you read that correctly, Tuesday. Henry Dicker, our czar of the annual show at the Hilton New York, pulled off a near miracle, and was able to shift the show to a Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday schedule, from our traditional start on Mondays. That's making many vendors and attendees very happy, not only because vendors get to dodge the Sunday premium on setup charges, but everybody avoids having to travel on  Sunday family time. And for die-hards like me, it gives us ammunition to convince fellow LTNY addicts who are out-of-state to fly in over the weekend and savor Manhattan's many restaurants and other delicious distractions.

>> Food & Thoughts: Speaking of LTNY, be sure to mark your calendar for our annual Editors' and Bloggers' breakfasts, which as is our tradition, will be held on Day 2 (Wednesday, January 30) in the Gibson Suite at the New York Hilton. This is a great opportunity for attendees to "put the name to the face" of editors of our national publications, as well as some of the top legal bloggers. ALM's Vice President & Editor-in-Chief, Aric Press, will emcee the Editors' Breakfast, which starts at 8 a.m.; our CEO and President Bill Carter will take the podium for the Bloggers' session, at 9 a.m. It's casual, informal, and there will be plenty of coffee, tea, and conversation. It's also free and open to all, no reservations required. Can't wait to see you there!

>> 2012 LTN Innovation Awards: I am thrilled to announce that we will be honoring the winners of our 2012 awards on Thursday, January 31. There will be a ceremony to formally present the winners, just prior to our Day 3 Keynote, (sponsored by DiscoverReady). The speaker is  Charles Duhigg (left), author of The Power of Habit, which has been on The New York Times' best-seller list for almost a year. We'll be revealing the winners on this website soon, but I can tell you now that they are impressive. The judges — Andrew Adkins III, Fredric Lederer, and David Whelan — told me that this year's winners reflect a diversity of projects and leadership. Between the winners and Duhigg, I can promise you that you will feel like your head is going to explode with ideas.

In the meantime, check out www.legaltechshow.com for details about the vendors, seminars, events, and registration info. Remember: if you want a free day pass that provides access to the exhibit hall, keynotes, and other select activities, you must sign up prior to the show.

Now, shall we check up on our friends in the e-discovery posse?

>> Floodgates Open: The nonprofit Electronic Discovery Institute has launched its "EDI Oracle Computer-Assisted Review Study," reports general counsel Patrick Oot (right). Using 1.6 million documents, participants are testing various approaches to document review, including both human and computer-aided review (aka technology-assisted review or predictive coding). The project is a collaboration among EDI, Oracle's Director of E-Discovery Pallab Chakraborty and his legal team, and chief scientists Peter Glynn and Gerd Infanger, from Stanford University. Currently, 21 vendors or firms are participating; with 60 in the works.

The results will provide independently reviewed metrics on the quality and costs of various TAR tools, compared to manual review, says Oot, who is special counsel for e-discovery at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The results, he says, could potentially speed up the acceptance of TAR methodologies by courts and by corporations." (Oot volunteers at EDI, as is its policy, the SEC disclaims responsibility for any employees' private statements or publications, and they do not necessarily reflect the SEC's views.)

Says Glynn, who chairs the school's department of management science and engineering, "As a scientist, it is intriguing to see the interplay of law, technology, and statistics in the American legal process. I feel the scientific community will be just as interested in these data as those in the legal community."

Oot has pledged to post updates about the study's progress weekly on LTN's EDD Update (www.eddupdate.com), so check it out!

>> Related News: Robert Owen (left), a partner at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan who has been quite active on the e-discovery education circuit, is now serving as president of EDI. (Co-founder Anne Kershaw has departed EDI; she is traveling in Italy and declined to comment.)

>> TAR Glossary: E-discovery activists Maura Grossman and Gordon Cormack have unveiled "The Grossman-Cormack TAR Glossary," with a forward by U.S.D.C. Magistrate Judge John Facciola (D.C.) You can find it on the Federal Courts Law Review website, www.fclr.org/fclr/articles/. Grossman is counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; Cormack is a professor at the University of Waterloo.

>> Survey Sez: A recent survey from Symantec Corp. suggests that e-discovery reviews may have hit a slight speed bump this year, so I'm turning the microphone over to my colleague Evan Koblentz to update you: The report, "Information Retention and E-Discovery Survey Global Results," found a drop in successful efforts to review electronically stored information. Symantec polled 500 companies (each with 500+ employees) from the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Germany; respondents reported that in 2011, 80% of reviews were successful, but in 2012, that figure dropped to 69%, explained Trevor Daughney, director of Symantec's information intelligence group. Why the bump? "I believe it is mainly due to the explosion of information that organizations have to manage," said Daughney. "Data is doubling every 18 months or so." Another factor: finding the right information sometimes takes longer than it used to, he noted.

But clearly companies are catching on when it comes to creating formal data retention protocols: This year, only 7% of respondents said their companies had no policies or even plans to create one — down from 14% in 2011.

>>Dancing With the Stars: OK, I'm gonna hand the microphone over to Catalyst Repository Systems' CEO John Tredennick. Check out http://at.law.com/LTNTC1214. Methinks he just might have too much time on his hands.

>> Got an item for Tech Circuit? Ping me: mbay@alm.com

Monica Bay is editor-in-chief of Law Technology News and a member of the California bar. Email: mbay@alm.com. Twitter: @lawtechnews @LTNMonicaBay.