Extract from David R. Cohen’s “Discovery Document Review Revisited”
The oft-predicted death of human document review has yet to materialize, due to factors such as distrust of AI, concern about procedural battles, technology costs charged by providers, and many courts holding technology to a higher standard than old-fashioned human review. Regardless of the reasons, large-scale human review is likely to remain with us for a while longer and will continue to be one of the largest cost drivers in litigation.
Despite the hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) for document review in litigation, most discovery document review is still performed by lawyers, analyzing documents for relevance, issues and privilege. The oft-predicted death of human document review has yet to materialize, due to factors such as distrust of AI, concern about procedural battles, technology costs charged by providers, and many courts holding technology to a higher standard than old-fashioned human review. Regardless of the reasons, large-scale human review is likely to remain with us for a while longer and will continue to be one of the largest cost drivers in litigation.
Optimizing human review and controlling costs is essential. But we cannot just rely on our favorite service provider and negotiate favorable hourly or per document rates for review. Most parties in litigation spend far more money than they should on the human part of document review, because they, or their providers, are NOT following optimal review strategies.
