Take note all, there is a new predictive coding case by Judge Andrew Peck. The good Judge waded into the TAR-pit of transparency, which in my opinion has caused much unnecessary problems with judges and parties who believe “transparency” is required when predictive coding is used, mandating the disclosure of seed sets. I do not think the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure place such a burden on producing parties by attacking the work-product doctrine or compelling the production of irrelevant information.
Judge Peck summarized that “where the parties do not agree to transparency, the decisions are split and the debate in the discovery literature is robust.” Rio Tinto Plc v. Vale S.A., 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24996, 8 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 2, 2015).
Judge Peck’s new opinion did not rule on the issue of seed transparency, because the parties had agreed to an ESI protocol that “disclosed all non-privilege documents in the control sets.” Rio Tinto Plc., at *10. However, Judge Peck provided his thoughts on what I would call a bias against technology-assisted review:
One point must be stressed -it is inappropriate to hold TAR to a higher standard than keywords or manual review. Doing so discourages parties from using TAR for fear of spending more in motion practice than the savings from using TAR for review.
Rio Tinto Plc, at *10, emphasis added.
That statement is extremely important. There is no valid reason to treat “predictive coding,” or any other form of analytics such as conceptual searching, email threading, or clustering, to higher discovery standards because “technology” is used.
The issue is whether or not the production is adequate. A producing party should not have to disclose attorney work product in analyzing their case or proving the technology functions. Courts do not hold competency hearings on whether an attorney properly knows how to conduct online legal research to ensure attorneys are maintaining their ethical duty of candor to the court. The same logic applies to technology-assisted review and productions.
Judge Peck did state while he generally believed in cooperation, “requesting parties can insure that training and review was done appropriately by other means, such as statistical estimation of recall at the conclusion of the review as well as by whether there are gaps in the production, and quality control review of samples from the documents categorized as now responsive.” Rio Tinto Plc., at *9-10, referencing Grossman & Cormack, Comments, supra, 7 Fed. Cts. L. Rev. at 301-12.
The focus of discovery should be whether or not a production is adequate. Are there production gaps? Is the parent-child relationship maintained between email messages and attachments? Is the producing party conducting quality assurance testing? Is the producing party documenting their efforts?
Judge Peck’s latest opinion will not be the final word on the issue of “transparency.” However, Judge Peck is a well-respected jurist who understands technology-assisted review. His statement that “it is inappropriate to hold TAR to a higher standard than keywords or manual review” is a very welcome one.