About this Blog. The primary author of this blog on Technology and Law is Ralph Losey. This is his primary professional platform and here is Ralph’s latest attorney resume dated May 2023. Here is a page describing Ralph’s many books, articles, awards and such. If you would like to contact him, please do so via email at ralph at losey dot law. You can also find him on Linkedin and a few other social media sites. Ralph created this blog in 2006 to advocate for a team approach to electronic discovery, where lawyers, technology vendors and other experts would work together. This idea became accepted doctrine in the law by 2019. Ralph then took a break from writing and public speaking for a few years to focus on his legal practice. He worked for a large national law firm supervising e-discovery in thousands of law suits. Ralph stepped away from Big Law at the end of 2022 and returned to writing again, energized and eager to embark on new law and technology challenges.
Our e-Discovery team has been undergoing a transformation since 2022 as you can see in the posts. Artificial Intelligence “entities” of all kinds are now part of our team. We use Artificial Intelligence (which this blog, like a few others, abbreviates as “Ai” and not “AI”) to connect the dots between e-Discovery, which has now become synonymous with discovery, and other fields of law, and perhaps even with life itself. We want to uncover the facts, the evidence, and the truth that underlies all legal reasoning and opinions. This blog still focuses on technology and the law, as that is Ralph’s primary expertise, but is evolving fast as the technologies finally go into the exponential stages of extremely fast innovation. To learn more about the core ideas driving our expansion and reinvention, check out the previous blog posts Information → Knowledge → Wisdom: Progression of Society in the Age of Computers; and then Examining the 12 Predictions Made in 2015 in “Information → Knowledge → Wisdom.
On July 2, 2023, Ralph used OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4, professional version with the Vista Plugin activated to create the video that follows. With just a short prompt the Ai generated this video, including the words. He just made a few tweaks. This provides a pretty good intro that what an e-Discovery Team is all about.
More About Ralph Losey. He is a tech-lawyer who has been using computers since 1978 when he first got his hands on one in law school. One of is sayings is to take your work seriously, but not yourself. The videos he has made, which are shown on the right column of this blog, and all the articles he wrote here, were done in that spirit. The same goes for his many books, such as: Adventures in Electronic Discovery (West, Spring 2011); Electronic Discovery: New Ideas, Trends, Case Law, and Practices (West 2010); Introduction to e-Discovery, (ABA 2009); e-Discovery: Current Trends and Cases (ABA 2008); E-DISCOVERY FOR EVERYONE, Ralph Losey; Foreword Judge Paul Grimm (ABA 2017) (Click here for my video intro to this book); PERSPECTIVES ON PREDICTIVE CODING And Other Advanced Search Methods for the Legal Practitioner, Editors: Jason R. Baron, Ralph C. Losey, Michael Berman; Foreword by Judge Andrew Peck (ABA 2016-2017).
When not writing and researching, Ai Ralph’s day job is service as a lawyer in private practice with a firm started by his son and daughter-in-law, Losey, PLLC. He also serves as an Arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association.
Legal ethics require Ralph Losey to tell you to look at the important disclaimer and notice about this blog. It is Ralph’s own creation, not his firm’s, past or present. It contains Ralph Losey’s personal views, not necessarily his law firm or anyone else. The e-Discovery Team blog provides education, information, and editorial opinions only, not legal advice. It is certainly not an ad nor solicitation to provide legal services. No legal advice is provided here.
About Ralph’s Work. From 2003 to 2022 Ralph’s legal practice, writings, speaking and research was done in Big Law. In 2010 his specialty in e-discovery started to focus on the use of Artificial Intelligence, specifically active machine learning, to search large quantities of data to find evidence needed for the resolution of law suits. But, now that Ralph has left the big firm environment, and moved to the Losey PLLC, his practice returned to its earlier roots as a general Technology Lawyer, plus adding the role of private judge, an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association.
Upon the release of ChatGPT 3.5 in November 2022 Ralph’s interest in Ai exploded. He has devoted a substantial portion of his professional time on research, experimentation, writing and speaking on LLM Generative Ai. This includes Ai assisted computer coding and the creation of new writings, illustrations and video, such as shown above, which also contains his music. The e-Discovery Team blog today includes a wide variety of chatbots, as shown, for instance by the Chat Bot that always appears at the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
Still, humans remain in charge. We see Ai as a tool, not a creature, even as it quickly become more intelligent that we are in many areas. Again, look to the videos on the righthand column and many articles in this blog that explore these issues in depth. Ralph is one of the country’s most active practitioners of Ai engineering, a hands-on user, aka ethical “hacker” type, not just a writer, teacher and lawyer-arbitrator.
If you want to did even deeper into his background, although even Ralph is starting to get bored by this, there is still more information on the right column of this blog, including a short bio, and recent interviews and such.
YOU ROCK.
very resourceful!
just found this resource. a really good job. thanks sam
are you going to sedona end of april? if you are we can meet then. sam
Thank You
Excellent insight and instruction – thank for the time invested in this useful resource.
This is a very informative and insightful blog. Definately one to put on your favorites and check everyday. Thanks for shedding light on complex issues.
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Enjoy your blog. I am very experienced in complex litigation/e-discovery work and I must note that I have not yet seen a discussion of the best ways to properly prepare a client for all the tech supprt necessary to actually conduct the large scale doc review (# 6) above. This process requires hiring from 30 – 100 + attorneys to work 60+ hours a week for months on end on large scale projects. This is a very labor intensive and expensive phase of e-discovery. It has been my experience that the software programs/vendors/consultants/servers/internet pipelines etc. etc. are poorly chosen (cost) causing serious delays and cost over runs on many projects. I also note that so called service providers in this area often employ very junior and inexperienced people to serve as “techs” and ‘on-site trainers’ who are not really up to the task of servicing the daily needs of complex project workflow. I understand that clients make cost driven choices in these matters but they wind up paying far more in the end in excessive attorney hours and overtime because they don’t properly prepare for the review phase.
You raise a good issue. Any thoughts on how to do that would be appreciated. Many people, and cos, seem to be penny wise and pound foolish. Most of the expense in large projects is review, and I have tried to make that point several times.
Are tool vendors aligned more towards a particular type of litigation (e.g., patent vs. civil rights vs. contract)? If so, that would be one means to categorize. The next method I suggest is to qualify each tool by the type of algorithm used. For example, a simple text search would be given a low score while an AI based tool capable of conducting semantic searches would be given a high value.
Then again, we still have to deal with stegongraphy, OCR conversions and the odd extremelylongrunonsentencethatdescribestheinnerworkingsofapatent.
Each process is explained thoroughly. Clears all doubts about e-discovery. Good job done
Wow. Fantastic flow charts. Your use of visuals here was better than most of the text books I read, let alone blogs. Thanks a million for putting in the time here.
Very informative website and appropriate. As a representative on the IT side of the house, I can confirm that cost is a big push-back on bringing attorney review technology platforms in house and for companies that are involved in a relatively small number of litigations (say once per year), the cost of maintaining expertise in operating those platforms is also of concern.
IT departments quite easily fall into the trap you describe of over collection not really understanding what happens once turned over for review. Even the in-house managing attorney is not cognizant of the cost of over collection. Outsourcers (both technology and outside counsel) are usually all too happy to get terrabytes of ESI to justify exorbitant review costs.
I have done some research into attorney review platforms that can be used in-house and I’m curious if you have any experience with any of those. As it’s an emerging product space, there are wide gaps in offerings and costs and I’m looking to narrow the field down by leveraging others’ experiences.
Thanks for your posts!
How does one subscribe to your blog? You are dead on. With being in the industry, I enjoy hearing others views to validate what I have learned thus far. Keep these coming. Have a great and most successful day.
Ralph, thank you for the insight and resource of your blog. I wonder if you would consider setting up and RSS feed (strictly for the ease of your readers)?
Be well,
Amy
Ralph,
Your blog represents the depth of your understanding of e-discovery on the whole.
What is more important is to make sense to the reader. I am new to e discovery and did derive immense knowledge and pleasure by reading your article.
Great job!
regards
balaji
Nice job on the blog!
I am a records management expert credentialed in medical records (HIM or Health Information Management) and specialize in Legal Health Records and eDiscovery in healthcare. I live near Orlando (Titusville) and thought I should reach out and make a connection. A friend of mine Kim Baldwin-Stried Reich speaks highly of you. When you have a chance please e-mail me at the e-mail address I posted with this message. Thank you.
Do you have a web feed I can save? I searched around but couldn’t
Enjoy your blog. I am very experienced in complex litigation/e-discovery work and I must note that I have not yet seen a discussion of the best ways to properly prepare a client for all the tech supprt necessary to actually conduct the large scale doc review (# 6) above. This process requires hiring from 30 – 100 + attorneys to work 60+ hours a week for months on end on large scale projects. This is a very labor intensive and expensive phase of e-discovery. It has been my experience that the software programs/vendors/consultants/servers/internet pipelines etc. etc. are poorly chosen (cost) causing serious delays and cost over runs on many projects. I also note that so called service providers in this area often employ very junior and inexperienced people to serve as “techs” and ‘on-site trainers’ who are not really up to the task of servicing the daily needs of complex project workflow. I understand that clients make cost driven choices in these matters but they wind up paying far more in the end in excessive attorney hours and overtime because they don’t properly prepare for the review phase.
+1
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Where I can get technical insight about e-discovery?
1) How generally people do the extraction of attachments of a document? msgs of a PST… and have them ready for viewing?
2) How to have high fidelity rendering of the documents? (Are there any on the fly trasnformation of the files for viewing them or this is done at processing time.
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Great blog and informative to the nth degree.
[…] About […]