Ride the Lightning

ONCE MORE, IN ENGLISH: ANALYTICS IN ELECTRONIC DISCOVERY

April 8, 2009

In reply to yesterday's guest post by Rob Robinson, I received a comment from Jeffrey Reed, a lawyer in the Philadelphis area: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyreedesq 

What particularly struck me about his comment is that we in EDD often don't do a great job of explaining our jargon. Now, Rob was writing for colleagues, most of whom will understand what was said. But I'm sure a lot of lawyer/readers may have been confused a bit. For what it is worth, my own view is that "analytics" is part of the processing of the data – and I'm not entirely sure how the term came into use, which is why I asked Rob to explain what he means by the term.  

So in Jeffrey's own words . . .

Here's my problem. I'm a 25-year lawyer and consider myself reasonably adept at conducting conversations with my technically-trained colleagues. I've worked with all types of engineers (electrical, metallurgical, plastics, vehicle accident reconstruction, fire science, you name it). But I have a distinct inability to understand a segment of the computer guru circuit that resists using English in a manner that lends itself to being readily understood.

For example, Rob's article is replete with the terms "analytics" and yet he utterly fails to actually describe the "analysis" that is used. He refers to a set of five tools, namely:

·  Indexing

·  Filtering

·  Near De-duplication

·  Sampling

·  Search Term Scoping

but does not provide a scintilla of explanation how they are to be linked to perform an analysis. In fact, it almost appears that rather than an analysis, Robinson is outlining a more detailed method of processing documents. Perhaps an explanation of what he means by "sampling" and "search term scoping" might support an understanding of how analysis comes into play, but no such explanation is contained in his article. But if he is proposing an augmented version of processing, he should say so rather than promoting another piece of jargon for people to have to wade through.

I don't doubt that he has something valuable to say, or that a number of his other insights aren't in some way illuminating, but his main thesis gets lost in the jargon shuffle. There simply isn't any explanation or tie between what he says are the valuable "analytical tools" and the cost saving and compliance upsides. Such a tie may exist, but I would never know it by reading (and yes, re-re-re-reading) his article. Clearly, de-duping, filtering and any other sort of technique used to remove documents from the processing or review population will save money. But I think he means more than just "remove documents that don't belong in the review set" when he uses "analytics" in such a prominent manner. If he means no more than that, why use the term?

If you want lawyers to value what you say, say it in English.

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I'm going to keep that in mind Jeffrey! Thanks for writing.

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