Topic Review & Redefining E-Disclosure
Andrew Szczech, Electronic Evidence Consultant, Kroll Ontrack
Online review tools are no longer simply repositories for client data. Topic review, the latest development in disclosure technology, assists lawyers in understanding more about their data before they review a single document by analysing the entire data set for them.
The increasing volume of electronic evidence is driving a need for improvements in the process of conducting document review. Using a more traditional approach, these processes can include reviewing documents individually as they are grouped under a user’s account, or sorting it by keyword or concept searches. Now, emerging technology can analyse the content of a set of documents and determine what themes are represented within the data -- prior to a legal team beginning any review activity. Forward-looking technology is the foundation of topic review – the technology redefining e-disclosure.
About Topic Review
Topic review technology uses a mathematical model that analyses the associations among words and documents within the document set, and groups the data into themes. The topic review function then reads the documents within the repository and learns what the data is about, then shows the lawyer the themes it has uncovered.
Several reasons exist for the success of this technology in the legal environment. First, data within topic subsets can be easily organised and certain topic groups can be assigned to distinct members of the review team. For example, documents containing privileged topics can be assigned to one team, while documents containing potentially non-relevant topics can be allocated to a different group of reviewers. In addition, legal teams can prioritise topic groupings for review so that data deemed as more important can be reviewed first while other, less significant information can be set aside.
Topic review can also improve the efficiency of review teams by enabling them to focus on a set of documents that are all related to a single subject matter. This enables reviewers to identify patterns and relationships within the topic groupings, therefore, making categorisation decisions easier and improving the review process by enabling teams to mass categorise documents much more quickly and easily than before. In addition, topic review can also help reviewers highlight potential connections between documents that could reveal critical details of the case.
When evaluating volumes of documents for relevance and responsiveness, topic review ensures consistent treatment of similar documents based on patterns and relationships within the topical groupings of data. This means that legal teams employing this technology can approach the matter from another angle, with more control, flexibility and functionality at their fingertips. By revealing topics uncovered from the data, lawyers can learn more about their case before ever reviewing a document.
Legal teams are using topic review to assist them in:
- Developing and testing case theories
- Identifying key people, terms, dates and documents
- Prioritising and assigning folders for the review team
- Managing their work flow
- Saving time throughout the review and production processes
- Undertake more proportionate electronic disclosure exercises
In conclusion, the emergence of topic review functionality means that lawyers can now utilise tools with greater flexibility than ever before. Lawyers ignoring tools such as this that assist legal teams to review documents with greater accuracy, speed and efficiency risk losing clients as their competitors turn to new technologies for the benefits of their clients and, in turn, themselves. Topic review will help proactive lawyers to further extend the quality and range of services available to their clients.
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