Historical Essays

One of eDJ’s predictions for 2012 is that PC-TAR (predictive coding-technology assisted review) goes mainstream. Instead of just sitting and waiting to see what happens with PC-TAR, we are actively researching it. Watch for the launch of an eDJ survey on the topic next week (and the chance to win yet another prize from eDJ for participating in our research). Jason Velasco did a call-out for anyone using PC-TAR to speak with us and we’ve been able to talk to actual practitioners. I want to quickly share some of what we are learning and call for anyone else trying PC-TAR to email us and share your story.

Have you ever received a detailed project estimate from a service provider and wondered how they came up with it? I have. Unless you provided them your client specific data assumptions, they likely used “industry standards” to fill in the blanks. Hmmm. Where did these industry standards come from and how accurate are they?

For the past two months, eDJ has been running a survey on eDiscovery and The Cloud. The results teach us some excellent lessons: that eDiscovery is an afterthought in The Cloud and that The Cloud does not kill off on-premise collection and preservation tools. Now, eDJ has published the first report in our series on eDiscovery and The Cloud: "Gearing Up for The Cloud and Social Media." One finding is that The Cloud and Social Media have generated more heat than actual action.

A recent Forbes blog by by Amanda Jones & Ben Kerschberg pointed out how technology-assisted review in eDiscovery can increase review accuracy and decrease overall review costs. The article mainly refers to the use of predictive coding, but touches on what has been called “technology assisted review.” Last month, Jason Velasco here at eDJ offered up the acronym PC-TAR (predictive coding – technology assisted review) to avoid controversy.

As the buzz around The Cloud has built over the last few years, one company remained noticeably silent about plans for The Cloud – Symantec. Rival companies like IBM and Autonomy began introducing cloud archiving products in addition to existing on-premise archiving products. With its market-leading archiving product Enterprise Vault, Symantec no doubt felt the competitive impact of cloud solutions, but when queried about a cloud strategy, the company would only mention its partnership with LiveOffice. Turns out, LiveOffice is the Symantec cloud strategy – Symantec has acquired LiveOffice for $115 million.

So where do you get your eDiscovery news from? Obviously you get some of it from the eDiscovery Journal, but no one should rely on any one source. A while back, my friend Browning Marean complimented me on a blog post. Turns out, he reads my blogs from another website. Luckily, that site at least attributed my blogs to me. It got me thinking about how easy it is to get high search ranking with the right domain name. Google and Bing have gotten smart about having multiple web addresses that redirect users to your site, so one ‘best’ practice for SEO optimization is to create microsites that reinforce your brand/message/perspective through proxy domain registrations.