Anyone following artificial intelligence in law knows that its first great cost saving has been in the area of document discovery. Machines can sort through duplicates so that associates don’t have to read the same document seven times, and they can string together thousands of emails to put together a quick-to-read series of a dozen
3 Ways to Improve Law Firm Innovation
Lawyers need to find witnesses. They look for assets to see if it’s worth suing or if they can collect after they win. They want to profile opponents for weaknesses based on past litigation or business dealings.
Every legal matter turns on facts. Most cases don’t go to trial, fewer still go to appeal, but
Is Your Law Firm Creative Enough? If Yes, Guess Again
We don’t usually think of the law as the place our most creative people go. Lawyers with a creative bent often drift into business, where a higher risk tolerance is often required to make a success of yourself. Some of our greatest writers and artists have legal training, but most seem to drop out when
Due Diligence When Databases Fail
What to do when the databases you rely on start stripping out the very data you are paying for?
Word in today’s Wall Street Journal that the main credit reporting firms will be removing many civil judgments and tax liens from credit reports prompts us to restate one our core beliefs:
Not only do databases
The Best Picture Mix-Up and Artificial Intelligence
What will it take for artificial intelligence to surpass us humans? After the Oscars fiasco last night, it doesn’t look like much.
As a person who thinks a lot about the power of human thought versus that of machines, what is striking is not that the mix-up of the Best Picture award was the product
Surprise! Google is There to Make Money
A story in the Wall Street Journal Google Uses Its Search Engine to Hawk Its Products serves as a useful reminder for something we tell clients all the time: Google is there to make money, and if your ideal search result won’t make them money, you may get a less-than-useful result.
Google is an indispensable
How to Tell Fake News from Real
Every day now, we hear about the woes of readers unable to distinguish between “fake news” and real news, as if undependable news reporting is anything new. Readers and fact investigators have always needed to know how to figure out for themselves what to believe and what to question further.
I am proud to have
Where the Electronic Data Are Makes All the Difference
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
–Joni Mitchell
Today’s decision by the Second Circuit that Microsoft did not have to hand over data stored on its server in Ireland should remind us all that information isn’t just “out there.” As with printed information so it is sometimes with electronic
Digital Assets: Worth Money, but Also Great Providers of Information
If you haven’t already, add digital assets to the list of things to look for in asset searches. In a world in which even modestly-trafficked internet domain names can change hands for tens of thousands of dollars, Delaware has become the first state to ensure families’ rights to access the digital assets of loved ones
Direct and Indirect Evidence: Learning from Computer Scientists
As investigators, we can’t always get exactly to the evidence we want to prove. Sometimes it merely doesn’t exist. Often, ethical and legal constraints keep us from being able to obtain the facts we definitively need to prove what we are investigating.
It’s easy to get lost searching for the unsearchable, pining for that one nugget that will help everything fall into place. But investigators don’t have that luxury.
So, we sometimes have to do what the computer scientists have done by pinpointing a font as a sign of trouble: We have to take a step back and look for clues elsewhere. We may not have direct evidence of wrongdoing, but we can scour the evidence in order to detect patterns that suggest wrongdoing. Alternatively, we can review the facts to see if we can find any that correlate with what it is we’ve been asked to help prove or disprove.
This is not about making assumptions–we never say that because x exists, therefore y. Instead, it is about being able to look for solutions that advance our clients’ knowledge, even if they fall short of the ideal solution.
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