With the extension of costs budgeting to all multitrack claims with a value of less than £10 million (from Practice Direction 3E of the English Civil Procedure Rules 1998) and the May 2016 decision of the English High Court in Brown v. BCA Trading Ltd. that permitted a party to use predictive coding technology in a contested application, it goes without saying that knowing how and when to use predictive coding will provide both lawyers and their clients with a clear tactical advantage in the form of effective case management, as well as time and cost efficiencies.
Although predictive coding technology has been around for some time, English lawyers, both in private practice and in-house, continue to be unsure as to how it actually works in practice and therefore prefer to stick to more traditional linear methods of review. However, as the decisions in Pyrrho Investments Ltd and another v. MWB Property Ltd. and others, in which the English High Court delivered its first reported decision expressly approving the use of predictive coding technology, and the case cited above demonstrate, predictive coding is here to stay.
