Extract from John Tredennick and Dr. William Webber’s article “Will ChatGPT Replace Ediscovery Review Teams?”
In a recent issue of Law.com, we asked the question “What Will Ediscovery Lawyers Do After ChatGPT? While the title was facetious, we, like so many others, were interested in how ChatGPT, this amazing new algorithm from OpenAI, might impact legal professionals.
ChatGPT is a new AI tool capable of answering complex questions and generating a conversational response. It can intelligently talk about almost any field–science, literature, humanities, history, even politics (at least up to September of 2021). It can also draft convincing arguments, write term papers, tell jokes and even speak “Pirate.” And, it reportedly passed a number of professional exams including one for medical licensing, an MBA test and even the legal bar.
Not surprisingly, we wondered how this new software might help improve ediscovery, a process involving the search and review of documents for use in legal proceedings and investigations. Over the past few years, the ediscovery market has grown to over $14 billion. Human document review makes up at least 60% of those costs, with over $8 billion being spent on analyzing and identifying relevant documents. Put simply, a lot of money is spent on human review that may or may not contribute to the quality of justice eventually obtained.
