Lexbe eDiscovery and Digital Forensics Blog

By Karsten Weber, CTO at Lexbe

With all the talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the media and how ChatGPT passed the Uniform Bar Examination at a level that exceeded the human average, I thought it would be timely to showcase how AI has equipped lawyers and paralegals with mission critical tools that address many of the challenges they face in modern eDiscovery.

AI is transforming eDiscovery by revolutionizing how legal professionals approach data analysis and review. By leveraging deep learning neural networks and machine learning algorithms, eDiscovery teams can quickly identify and extract relevant information from vast quantities of documents, saving time and reducing costs. AI-powered tools can also improve accuracy and consistency in document review, while minimizing the risk of missing critical information. While AI technologies can enable eDiscovery to be more efficient, effective, and accessible than ever before, they’re supplemental and not a replacement for lawyers and paralegals.

Here are some of the key applications of AI in eDiscovery:

1. Cross-Border Litigation and Handling Multiple Languages

AI-powered language translation is revolutionizing the way we litigate cases across borders. With sophisticated algorithms that can understand and interpret multiple languages, AI translation tools are rapidly advancing, becoming more accurate and fluent, making it easier for boutique law firms to handle multilingual document reviews. AI-powered translation tools enable firms to maintain control of cross-border cases, and are crucial for bridging language barriers, cross-cultural understanding, and not having to rely on costly human translators or counsel in other countries.

2. Automated Audio File Transcription

By converting audio data into text, machine learning algorithms can quickly analyze and categorize large volumes of recorded conversations, depositions, and other audio content. It can identify and differentiate between speakers, captures the date and timestamp of the dialogue on the recording and more. With the widespread adoption of web conferencing and Zoom calls due to the pandemic, AI-powered transcription has grown rapidly. This helps legal professionals to more efficiently manage audio data in eDiscovery.

3. Determining Naughty or Nice

Sentiment analysis is another AI application used in eDiscovery to help identify and categorize relevant documents based on their emotional tone. By analyzing the sentiment of emails, social media posts, and other text data, eDiscovery teams can gain valuable insights into the attitudes and behaviors of key individuals involved in a legal matter. This information can help legal professionals build a more complete picture of a case, quickly identify hot documents, and make more informed decisions throughout the eDiscovery process.

4. Answering Who, What, and Where

With the expanding sources and volume of ESI in eDiscovery, it is often difficult to get your arms around the key components of the dataset that’s ingested into your eDiscovery platform. AI-powered entity detection helps solve this issue by identifying key entities like people, organizations, and locations within large volumes of documents. AI entity detection helps quickly categorize and prioritizes documents based on their relevance to a legal matter. This helps to streamline the review process, reduce costs, and minimize the risk of missing important information. As AI technology continues to improve, entity detection is becoming an increasingly valuable tool for legal professionals managing complex eDiscovery projects.

5. Cataloging Photographs

Cognitive image recognition is an emerging AI technology that is transforming the way legal professionals approach photographs in eDiscovery. By analyzing visual content and identifying key features and patterns, AI algorithms quickly categorize and prioritize images based on the content of each photograph. For photo intensive matters, this helps to streamline the review process and reduce costs, while also uncovering valuable insights that might otherwise be missed.

6. Grouping Similar Documents

Near duplication groupings is another AI-powered technology that is helping to streamline the eDiscovery review process. By identifying documents that are similar in content, structure, or language, machine learning algorithms can group them together for review as a single unit, reducing the time and effort required to review each individual document. This helps legal professionals to more efficiently manage large volumes of data, helps eliminate privileged documents from slipping through the cracks, and facilitates more informed decisions.

6. Color-Coded Document Comparison

Automated document comparison is an AI technology that is becoming increasingly popular in eDiscovery. By analyzing two or more versions of a document and identifying differences between them, machine learning algorithms can quickly and accurately highlight areas of interest for review. This helps legal professionals to more efficiently manage document comparison tasks in eDiscovery and reduce the time and effort required to identify key information. This AI capability is particularly relevant when reviewing versions of contracts.

7. Tried and True Predictive Coding

As one of the initial applications of AI in eDiscovery, predictive coding continues to evolve. With the ability to learn from user behavior, AI algorithms can quickly and accurately categorize documents according to their relevance to a particular legal matter. This helps to streamline the review process, reduce costs, and minimize the risk of missing important information. As predictive coding continues to improve, it is quickly becoming a valuable tool for efficiently handling document intensive cases.

What’s in Store for the Future with Generative AI like ChatGPT?

As a language model trained on a vast amount of textual data, ChatGPT has the potential to transform the eDiscovery process in several ways. For example, it could be used to automate tasks like document categorization and analysis, reducing the time and effort required to review large volumes of data. ChatGPT could also be used to extract insights from unstructured data sources like chat logs and emails, providing valuable context and understanding of key individuals involved in a legal matter. As AI technology continues to evolve, ChatGPT is poised to become an increasingly valuable tool for eDiscovery professionals.

#AI #ChatGPT #eDiscovery #LegalTech #LanguageTranslation #CrossBorderLitigation #SentimentAnalysis #AudioTranscription #EntityDetection #ImageRecognition #NearDuplicationGroupings #DocumentComparison #PredictiveCoding