Technology announcements at LegalTech New York often provide a theme that is adopted over the course of the show. Last year, Thomson Reuters announced WestlawNext at the show and put the human element back into legal research. The “human element” echoed in the Exhibit Hall as vendors stressed their ability to facilitate human-computer interaction in e-discovery document review and software interface designs.
This year there was no overall technology theme or scheme to adopt. There was, however, consensus on avoiding certain buzzwords like cloud and “early case assessment.” Both terms are not descriptive and vary according to a speaker’s background and context. Cloud computing can be web mail, hosting services, online practice management, or Amazon EC2. And early case assessment depends on client requirements, court demands, and case law precedent.
We don’t need more inexact terms in these exacting times. We need more exact terms for the precise tools legal professionals use throughout e-discovery. As Sophie A. Ross of FTI Consulting pointed out to me, the same tools used to collect and process electronically stored information can be used to provide quality control in the document review process. But for want of better words to describe software as a service and advanced e-discovery technology, we’ll continue to hear about clouds and ECA — although they are both out of this world.
via LegalTech New York 2011 Wrap-Up: Products, Trends, and More.
