Introduction to Discovery (1/7): Don't leave the choice of discovery vendor to others!
2020/2/27
Introduction to Discovery (3/7): Pay attention to the details of "Unit Price"!Discovery support quote tricks that make a big loss if you don't know
2020/2/27
Is that vendor really okay?
What should I do if a Japanese company is involved in an international proceeding and decides to choose a discovery vendor?
When choosing a discovery vendor, the "best thing to do" is to keep costs down as much as possible.Estimated (note here!) Cheap priceIs to choose a discovery vendor that will offer you.
If you select a vendor based only on the price without checking the quality of the work, you will not be able to work with high accuracy within the range of the estimate, unexpected costs will be added, and on the contrary it may be expensive. ..After all, a low unit price is not synonymous with a low total price.
International proceedings are also a battle against time.In particular, if you are late for the initial response, the proceedings that were not originally disadvantageous to your company will end up with different outcomes, or you will have to pay a settlement that you did not originally have to pay. ..
“Initial response” primarily refers to lawyer selection, discovery vendor selection, and ligation hold (protection of document and data to be evidenced).Here, let me tell you about vendor selection and lawyer selection.
"Introduction to Discovery (1/7): Don't leave the choice of discovery vendor to others!As explained in the above, it is ideal that the vendor selection is not left to the lawyer, but the legal officer of the company and the lawyer should think together.The simplest and most effective way to do this isWhen you conclude a contract with a lawyer, be sure to include the sentence "The head office of the company decides the selection of the discovery vendor" in the contract.is.This will prevent lawyers from deciding on a vendor without asking the company to protect their vested interests.
Also, when deciding on a vendor, you can ask the following questions:Minimum required.
(1) Whether you can use predictive coding
Predictive coding is the process of reviewing by computer..
To explain in a little more detail, it is an "automatic file weighting function" that can automatically classify uninvestigated related files based on a certain sample day.
Traditionally, reviews have been done visually by humans, but humans become tired if they continue to work for a long time, which reduces work efficiency and accuracy.In the first place, accuracy and work speed differ depending on the reviewer. Even if the reviewer A can check with an average accuracy of 80%, the reviewer B can only check with an accuracy of 60%, and even with the same A, the accuracy drops in the evening compared to the first work in the morning. I will end up.
Computer is tireless
In this respect, the machine is tireless.Moreover, the processing is fast and accurate.It is said that there is an accuracy of 90% or more in data classification, such as assigning importance to each document.Depending on the task, a single predictive coding machine can be as fast and accurate as 1 lawyers.
With this predictive coding, you can definitely reduce the cost of discovery.Vendors who nevertheless don't want to use it may not have the technology, or they may not dare to adopt it because they lose the "umami" of doing expensive work in reviews.Such vendors should be excluded from the candidates.
(2) Whether Japanese is available
The next important thing is "whether or not Japanese is supported".It is a major premise for vendors expanding into Japan to be able to speak Japanese, but here I would like to confirm the quality.
First of all, not only the machinePerson in chargeIt is important to be able to speak Japanese.It is not just a matter of saying that it is equipped with a system that can analyze and review Japanese documents.
Definition of Japanese support:
"Japanese support" here means that a person who can speak Japanese as a mother tongue is involved as a project manager and even follows the company.If the person in charge at the vendor does not understand Japanese, it will be difficult to notice any changes that occur in the field, even if the communication with the client company is completed in English.For example, if you cannot distinguish between Japanese Kanji and garbled characters even though garbled characters have occurred, you may proceed to the previous process without dealing with garbled characters.
The difference also appears when selecting words for keyword search.Accumulation of these small differences often results in large differences in delivery times and costs.
Range and accuracy of Japanese support
Next, let's look at the range and accuracy of Japanese support.
If consistent Japanese support is not possible from data collection to review, it will be necessary to translate all documents before review, which will delay the review and increase the cost.You should definitely avoid this, as translating the material before the review may make it impossible to find evidence.
The same can be said for the "predictive coding" introduced in (XNUMX).Some overseas vendors say, "Predictive coding is possible, but Japanese is not supported."It's a good idea to check this carefully to see if the vendor you're trying to quote has Japanese-speaking predictive coding technology.
Also, even if the vendors insist that they support Japanese in the entire range, the accuracy varies from vendor to vendor, so we asked them to demonstrate to confirm the accuracy. , It is recommended to check the recall rate and precision rate (see below).
What is Predictive Coding?
* Predictive coding = predictive coding
[Advanced analysis function of artificial intelligence technology / text mining]
▼ Mechanism
1. A corporate legal officer or lawyer scrutinizes a small number of documents to determine if they are related to a proceeding.
2. Artificial intelligence learns teacher data and sorts all files to be reviewed according to criteria judged by legal staff or lawyers. (Scoring)
Depending on the teacher data to be learned, the target to be learned (expertise / collective intelligence) can be selected.
(3) Can the recall rate and precision rate be disclosed?
"Recall rate" and "precision rate" are one of the indicators to measure the accuracy of predictive coding.
Recall rate (recall rate)Is the percentage of documents that should be extracted as search results that can actually be judged correctly.system'sComprehensivenessIt is an index that indicates the value of "Relevant", which is a value that indicates highly relevant materials.The formula is expressed as follows.
On the other hand, the precision rate is the rate at which a truly correct document can be extracted from the results produced by the system.system'sAccuracyIt is an index showing the judgment accuracy of "Relevant".The formula is expressed as follows.
These rates are very complex and may be difficult for the general public to understand, but a decent discovery vendor will accumulate the numbers extracted from the sample. It should also be possible to provide past use cases.
However, beware of vendors who want to obscure this number or are not extracting data.
Recall rate and precision rate
What is the recall rate?
An index that shows how much accurate data is covered among the sentences extracted as "relevant" by predictive coding.
What is the precision rate?
An index that shows how well the sentences extracted by predictive coding match the correct data.
The three questions can also help you decide on a lawyer
For Japanese companies that are not accustomed to international litigation, it may be difficult to negotiate directly with a discovery vendor.In addition, it may be difficult for a lawyer to dispute the selection of a vendor because the lawyer has a strong relationship of trust with the company's officers.
Even in such cases, the above three questions should always be asked to a lawyer. The lawyer who says "OK! Leave it to me" is really suspicious.It's more important to keep asking questions until you get a concrete answer, rather than whether it's okay.If talking to a lawyer doesn't make sense, you should negotiate with the vendor directly.
If a lawyer stubbornly refuses to do so, you may want to carefully check the vendor's capabilities and responsiveness behind it, as well as review the lawyer itself.In other words, the vendor-selected ruler also functions as a lawr-selected ruler.
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