Digital White Papers

TECHNOLOGY-ASSISTED REVIEW 2.0 •Expertise: In a field where start-ups are prevalent and competition is fierce, experience counts. Consider both the amount of time your vendor has been deploying its TAR methodology and the expertise and background of its consultants and project managers. BEST PRACTICES FOR EMPLOYING TAR Garbage In, Garbage Out: It's a cliché for a reason — especially when working with TAR. Pay close attention to what is fed into the system, and •Be aware of documents that have very little or no text. For example, an email from the CEO to the CFO that says "make it so" or "FYI" could be the most critical document in the entire case. But those phrases are not important independently. •References: Prior to working with a TAR vendor, check references. This provides peace of mind the TAR methodology will be deployed in a legally defensible way. •Documentation: The importance of documentation cannot be overstated. Counsel or the vendor (or both) must have a system for documenting every decision made during the life cycle of the review project — from seed set collection through review team training and privilege log generation. •Foreign Language Expertise: Always be sure your technology-assisted review vendor is able to review foreign language sets accurately. Paying attorneys or temporary reviewers to review documents in foreign languages can be costly, so applying TAR to a multilanguage document set can produce even more cost savings. make sure it's consistent. TAR applies the attorney's instructions to the entire data set, so it's important to make sure the data put into the system are as clean as possible. You can only establish the importance in context — in the attachments, the dates or preceding email messages. Be aware the less text in the document, the less text the algorithm has to work with and the less reliable your results could be. •Ensure good, clean text input at the document level. •In dealing with foreign language characters, make sure the text files that hold the document-level text are in UTF-8 format, so characters do not get converted into question marks or wingdings. •Some systems will assess not only text, but also the different metadata fields, such as the senders and recipients, time and date stamps, and even the document types. Counsel must understand and ask questions about these criteria to ensure TAR is applied appropriately in a given case.

• Cover