truth | e-Discovery Team

UPDATE ON TIME TRAVEL: Sequel to my 2017 blog “Mr. Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield: a baffling lesson from art history”

July 5, 2023

All images in the supplement are by Ralph Losey using Midjourney

This is an update to an earlier blog that I wrote, tongue-in-cheek, in 2017 on “evidence” of time travel from a painting. I found out, just yesterday, that this past blog went viral some time ago, honestly not sure when, with over 20,000 hits.

This prompted me, and my AI friends, to look into and write about the latest science on time travel. I also add another painting to the mix, one from the 17th Century, that Tim Cook swears has an iPhone in it. Plus, I must pet Schrodinger’s Cat, face Time Paradoxes, and, as usual, add many Midjourney AI graphics that I crafted for maximum right-brain impact. So put down your prayer books, read this for a few minutes instead, and see where and when it takes you.

Introduction

The past blog, Mr. Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield: a baffling lesson from art history, concerned an oddity of art history, a painting by a semi-famous, U.S. painter, Umberto Romano, which supposedly contains evidence of time travel. The painting was created in 1933 and clearly shows a Native American staring at an iPhone-like object. It is not a fake painting. You can see it for yourself in the original article that is included below. What does it look like to you? The providence proves it is not fake. It was painted as a mural on the wall of a Post Office in Springfield, Massachusetts. People have been walking past it every day since 1933. They look but do not see.

Of course, this future image transfer might not be the result of physical time travel, but instead, the young artist, Umberto, could have had a dream or vision of the future. Perhaps the vision was intentionally induced in a hypnagogic state, or by drugs of some sort? That seems much more likely to me, but still poses intellectual problems.

Whatever the cause, discounting chance or mass delusion, any accurate vision of the future is a mystery. It is evidence of the permeability of time, which should, by logic, and old Newtonian science, be a solid wall of causality. Visions of the future should be impossible, and yet? Schrodinger’s Cat? Infinite parallel universes? Everything, even iPhones, everywhere, all at once. Welcome to 21st Century spooky science.

Tim Cook and More Art Evidence of Time Travel

In my opinion, the 1933 painting with iPhone by Umberto could be admitted into evidence, that is, if there was ever an actual case or controversy where time travel was relevant. Of course, we have now seen that the centuries old case or controversy requirement may be waived by the Supreme Court. Apparently this can be done any time a majority of the Justices deem that is necessary to drag the country back in time. Time and law are so malleable these days.

For evidence of time travel, I would also call Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, as a witness to the stand. Cook has publicly stated, just after seeing an original painting by 17th-century Dutch artist Pieter de Hooch, that the man in the painting is holding an iPhone. The below photos of the art have not been altered, aside from color variation, which I did not do. Sure looks like an iPhone to me. Tim will swear to it.

LadBible reported that Cook was asked in a conference, the day after seeing the painting, “Do you happen to know Tim, where and when the iPhone was invented?” Cook replied: “You know, I thought I knew until last night…. in one of the paintings I was so shocked. There was an iPhone in one of the paintings.” Acknowledging that his claim may come off as ridiculous, he explained, “It’s tough to see, but I swear it’s there. I always thought I knew when the iPhone was invented, but now I’m not so sure anymore.” Proof of time travel? 350-year-old painting seems to feature an iPhone, Tim Cook agrees. No further questions of this witness.

Fake image of Tim Cook in the style of a painting by Pieter de Hooch

Time Paradox: a major problem of time travel theory

Traveling forward in time, in the sense of experiencing time dilation due to high velocities or strong gravitational fields, is well-established in physics, supported by both special and general relativity. It has been proven true many times with atomic clocks on planes and other methods. Time for anyone will slow down relative to a stationary observer. Their time keeps slowing down as their speed approaches the speed of light, or it slows down within a strong gravitational field, such as near a black hole. When they return to their prior time-space, they will have traveled into the future. Space and time are relative.

In Einstein’s unified four-dimensional space-time framework, time and space are interconnected. But, the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court aside, there are major theoretical problems with time flowing the other way, chief among them, time paradoxes. Travel back in time would logically disrupt the conventional sequence of cause and effect.

The best known time paradox is the “grandfather paradox.” In this scenario, a time traveler goes back into the past and inadvertently or deliberately kills their grandfather before their parent (the time traveler’s mother or father) is born. Consequently, the time traveler would never be born, but if they were never born, then they couldn’t have traveled back in time to kill their grandfather in the first place. This cycle presents an intractable contradiction.

Such paradoxes are the result of a linear perspective of time, where causes precede effects. Most physicists and philosophers argue that time paradoxes prove that backward time travel is inherently impossible. Others suggest that they could be resolved through a “multiverse” theory, in which the time traveler’s actions create or move them into a parallel universe. There are other explanations, such as bending space, wormholes, etc., but this one is the most popular now.

Time Travel and the Multiverse Theory: ‘Everything, Everywhere, All At Once’

The multiverse theory of time travel suggests that there are potentially an infinite number of universes, or “multiverses,” each existing parallel to one another. When one travels in time, they are not actually altering their own past or future within their original universe. Instead, they’re moving into a different parallel universe. So much for Leibniz’ “best of all possible worlds.”

One way to comprehend this concept is through the idea of “quantum superposition,” as seen in the thought experiment “Schrodinger’s Cat,” which posits that all possible states of a system exist simultaneously until observed. Similarly, for every decision or event, a universe exists for each potential outcome. Hence, when you travel back in time and change an event, you merely shift to a different parallel universe where that different event occurs.

This theory serves as a solution to time travel paradoxes. For instance, in the case of the grandfather paradox, you could go back and kill your grandfather, but that would be in a different universe. In your original universe, your grandfather still survives to have your parent, and subsequently, you. Hence, there’s no paradox.

Several renowned theoretical physicists have lent their support to some variation of the multiverse theory, including:

Hugh Everett III. Way back in 1957, Everett proposed the “Many-Worlds Interpretation” of quantum mechanics, which can be thought of as a kind of multiverse. According to this interpretation, every quantum event spawns new, parallel universes.
Stephen Hawking. Although he did not like the idea, Hawking often referenced the multiverse and was proposing experiments on it at the end of his life. He would reference it in the context of the anthropic principle, which states that we observe the universe the way it is because if it were different, we wouldn’t be here to observe it.
Max Tegmark. He proposed a taxonomy of multiverses, classifying them into four different levels.
1. Level 1: The Extended Universe: This level suggests that if you go far enough in any direction, you’d start seeing duplicates of everything, including Earth and yourself. It’s because the universe is so big, and there’s only a finite way to arrange particles, so patterns must repeat eventually.
1. Level 2: The Bubble Universes: This level suggests that our universe is just one “bubble” among many in a bigger cosmos. Each bubble universe may have different physical laws, so what’s possible in one might not be possible in another.
2. Level 3: The Many-Worlds Universe: This level comes from a way of interpreting quantum mechanics, where every possible outcome of a quantum event happens but in a different universe. So, if you flip a coin, it lands both heads and tails, but in separate universes.
3. Level 4: The Ultimate Multiverse: This level suggests that every mathematically possible universe exists. It’s kind of the catch-all multiverse, where anything you can describe with mathematics, no matter how strange or unlikely, has a universe where it’s real.
Geraint Lewis. Lesser known than the first three, Professor Lewis suggests that the burst of inflation in the early stages of our universe might be eternal, with individual universes crystallizing out of it, each written with its own unique laws of physics.

Conclusion

Science says time travel is possible, albeit it is very, very unlikely that you can go backwards. So time travel to the future might be possible, but there is no going back. Thus, if you could, for instance, somehow go from 1933, where no one has ever seen or even conceived of a cell phone, to today, where they are ubiquitous, you could not return back to 1933 to include these cell phones in your paintings. That is, unless there are an infinite number of parallel Universes, in which case anything is possible. Everything may all be happening at once, and time itself is a kind of delusion to help us make sense of it all.

Did Umberto Romano somehow transcend time and see the key icon of the early 21st Century, the iPhone? Was time travel his special artistic skill? Does that explain the names of many of his other paintings? Such as:

Please take a moment now to read the blog that I wrote six years ago, below, and then, sometime in the future, let me know what you think. I will try to remember to watch the viewing stats this time. Who knows, I may even write a prequel.

_____________________

Mr. Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield: a baffling lesson from art history

Mr. Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield is the name of a mural painted at the Post Office in Springfield, Massachusetts. This mural was painted by Umberto Romano in 1933. Note the date. Time is important to this article. Umberto Romano was supposedly born in Bracigliano Italy in 1905 and moved to the United States at the age of 9. He was then raised in Springfield, Massachusetts. His self-portrait is shown right. The mural is supposed to depict the arrival in 1636 of William Pynchon, an English colonist, later known as the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts.

The reason I’m having a bit of fun with my blog and sharing this 1933 mural is the fact that the Native American shown in the lower right center appears to be holding an iPhone. And not just holding it, but doing so properly with the typical distracted gaze in his eyes that we all seem to adopt these days. Brian Anderson, Do We All See the Man Holding an iPhone in This 1937 Painting? (Motherboard, 8/24/17). Here let me focus in on it for you and you will see what I mean. Also click on the full image above and enlarge the image. Very freaky. That is undeniable.

Ok, so how did that happen? Coincidence? There is no indication of vandalism or fraud. The mural was not later touched up to add an iPhone. This is what this Romano character painted in 1933. Until very recently everyone just assumed the Indian with the elaborate goatee was looking at some kind of oddly shaped hand mirror. This was a popular item of trade in the time depicted, 1636. Not until very recently did it become obvious that he was handling an iPhone. Looks like a large version 6.1 to me. I can imagine the first people waiting in line at the Post Office in Springfield who noticed this oddity while looking at their own iPhone.

The folks who like to believe in time travel now offer this mural as Exhibit “A” to support their far-out theories. Also see: Green, 10 Most Compelling Pieces Of Evidence That May Prove Time Travel Exists (YouTube, 7-3-16).

I do not know about that, but I do know that if time travel is possible, and some physicists seem to think it is, then this is not the kind of thing that should be allowed. Please add this to the list of things that no superintelligent being, either natural or artificial, but especially artificial, should be allowed to do. Same goes for screen writers. I for one cannot tolerate yet another naked Terminator or whatever traveling back in time.

But seriously, just because you are smart enough to know how to do something does not mean that you should. Time travel is one of those things. It should not be allowed, well, at least, not without a lot of care and attention to detail so as not to change anything. Legal regulations should address time travel. Build that into the DNA of AI before they leap into superintelligence. At least require all traces of time travel to be erased. No more painting iPhones into murals from the 1930s. Do not awaken the batteries, I mean the people, from their consensus trance with hints like that.

So that is my tie-in to AI Ethics. I am still looking for a link to e-discovery, other than to say, if you look hard enough and keep an open mind, you can find inexplicable things everyday. Kind of like many large organizations’ ESI preservation mysteries. Where did that other sock go?

So what is your take on Umberto Romano‘s little practical joke? Note he also put a witch flying on a broomstick in the Mr. Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield mural and many other odd and bizarre things. He was known as an abstract expressionist. Another of his self-portraits is shown above, titled “Psyche and the Sculptor.” (His shirt does look like one of those new skin tight men’s compression shirts, but perhaps I am getting carried away. Say, what is in his right hand?) Romano’s work is included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Fogg Art Museum in Boston and the Corcoran Gallery and Smithsonian Institution in Washington. In discussing Mr. Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield the Smithsonian explains that “The mural is a mosaic of images, rather than depicting one specific incident at a set point in time.” Not set in time, indeed.

One more thing – doesn’t this reclining nude by Umberto Romano look like a woman watching Netflicks on her iPad? I like the stand she has her iPad on. Almost bought one like it last week.

Some of Romano’s other works you might like are:

These are his titles, not mine. Not too subtle was he? There is still an active market for Romano’s work.

3 Comments | AI Ethics, Lawyers Duties, Technology | Tagged: ethics, truth | Permalink
Posted by Ralph Losey

e-Discovery and Poetry on a Rainy Night in Portugal

April 17, 2018

From time to time I like read poetry. Lately it has been the poetry of Billy Collins, a neighbor and famous friend. (He was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003.) I have been reading his latest book recently, The Rain in Portugal. Billy’s comedic touches balance the heavy parts. Brilliant poet. I selected one poem from this book to write about here, The Five Spot, 1964. It has a couple of obvious e-discovery parallels. It also mentions a musician I had never heard of before, Roland Kirk, who was a genius at musical multi-tasking. Enjoy the poem and videos that follow. There is even a lesson here on e-discovery.

The Five Spot, 1964

There’s always a lesson to be learned
whether in a hotel bar
or over tea in a teahouse,
no matter which way it goes,
for you or against,
what you want to hear or what you don’t.

Seeing Roland Kirk, for example,
with two then three saxophones
in his mouth at once
and a kazoo, no less,
hanging from his neck at the ready.

Even in my youth I saw this
not as a lesson in keeping busy
with one thing or another,
but as a joyous impossible lesson
in how to do it all at once,

pleasing and displeasing yourself
with harmony here and discord there.
But what else did I know
as the waitress lit the candle
on my round table in the dark?
What did I know about anything?

Billy Collins

The famous musician in this poem is Rahsaan Roland Kirk (August 7, 1935^[2] – December 5, 1977). Kirk was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played tenor saxophone, flute, and many other instruments. He was renowned for his onstage vitality, during which virtuoso improvisation was accompanied by comic banter, political ranting, and, as mentioned, the astounding ability to simultaneously play several musical instruments.

Here is a video of Roland Kirk with his intense multimodal approach to music.

One more Kirk video. What a character.

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The Law

There are a few statements in Billy Collins’ Five Spot poem that have obvious applications to legal discovery, such as “There’s always a lesson to be learned … no matter which way it goes, for you or against, what you want to hear or what you don’t.” We are all trained to follow the facts, the trails, wherever they may lead, pro or con.

I do not say either pro or con “my case” because it is not. It is my client’s case. Clients pay lawyers for their knowledge, skill and independent advice. Although lawyers like to hear evidence that supports their client’s positions and recollections, after all it makes their job easier, they also want to hear evidence that goes against their client. They want to hear all sides of a story and understand what it means. They look at everything to craft a reasonable story for judge and jury.

Almost all cases have good and bad evidence on both sides. There is usually some merit to each side’s positions. Experienced lawyers look for the truth and present it in the best light favorable for their client. The Rules of Procedure and duties to the court and client require this too.

Bottom line for all e-discovery professionals is that you learn the lessons taught by the parties notes and documents, all of the lessons, good and bad.

The poem calls this a “… joyous impossible lesson in how to do it all at once, pleasing and displeasing yourself with harmony here and discord there.” All lawyers know this place, this joyless lesson of discovering the holes in your client’s case. As far as the “doing it all at once ” phrase, this too is very familiar to any e-discovery professional. If it is done right, at the beginning of a case, the activity is fast and furious. Kind of like a Roland Kirk solo, but without Roland’s exuberance.

Everybody knows that the many tasks of e-discovery must be done quickly and pretty much all at once at the beginning of a case: preservation notices, witness interviews, ESI collection, processing and review. The list goes on and on. Yet, in spite of this knowledge, most everyone still treats e-discovery as if they had bags of time to do it. Which brings me to another Billy Collins poem that I like:

BAGS OF TIME

When the keeper of the inn
where we stayed in the Outer Hebrides
said we had bags of time to catch the ferry,
which we would reach by traversing the causeway
between this island and the one to the north,

I started wondering what a bag of time
might look like and how much one could hold.
Apparently, more than enough time for me
to wonder about such things,
I heard someone shouting from the back of my head.

Then the ferry arrived, silent across the water,
at the Lochmaddy Ferry Terminal,
and I was still thinking about the bags of time
as I inched the car clanging onto the slipway
then down into the hold for the vehicles.

Yet it wasn’t until I stood at the railing
of the upper deck with a view of the harbor
that I decided that a bag of time
should be the same color as the pale blue
hull of the lone sailboat anchored there.

And then we were in motion, drawing back
from the pier and turning toward the sea
as ferries had done for many bags of time,
I gathered from talking to an old deckhand,
who was decked out in a neon yellow safety vest,

and usually on schedule, he added,
unless the weather has something to say about it.

Conclusion

Take time out to relax and let yourself ponder the works of a poet. We have bags of time in our life for that. Poetry is liable to make you a better person and a better lawyer.

I leave you with two videos of poetry readings by Billy Collins, the first at the Obama White House. He is by far my favorite contemporary poet. Look for some of his poems on dogs and cats. They are especially good for any pet lovers like me.

One More Billy Collins video.

Leave a Comment » | AI Ethics, Evidence, informaton, knowledge, Lawyers Duties, Review, Search, wisdom | Tagged: document review, ethics, justice, law, legal profession, legal search, search, truth | Permalink
Posted by Ralph Losey

Waymo v. Uber, Hide-the-Ball Ethics and the Special Master Report of December 15, 2017

December 17, 2017

The biggest civil trial of the year was delayed by U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup due to e-discovery issues that arose at the last minute. This happened in a trade-secret case by Google’s self-driving car division, WAYMO, against Uber. Waymo LLC v. Uber Techs., Inc. (Waymo I), No. 17-cv-00939-WHA (JSC), (N.D. Cal. November 28, 2017). The trial was scheduled to begin in San Francisco on December 4, 2017 (it had already been delayed once by another discovery dispute). The trial was delayed at Waymo’s request to give it time to investigate a previously undisclosed, inflammatory letter by an attorney for Richard Jacobs. Judge Alsup had just been told of the letter by the United States attorney’s office in Northern California. Judge Alsup immediately shared the letter with Waymo’s attorneys and Uber’s attorneys.

At the November 28, 2017, hearing Judge Alsup reportedly accused Uber’s lawyers of withholding this evidence, forcing him to delay the trial until Waymo’s lawyers could gather more information about the contents of the letter. NYT (11/28/17). The NY Times reported Judge Alsup as stating:

I can no longer trust the words of the lawyers for Uber in this case … You should have come clean with this long ago … If even half of what is in that letter is true, it would be an injustice for Waymo to go to trial.

NYT (11/28/17).

Judge Alsup was also reported to have said to Uber’s lawyers in the open court hearing of November 28, 2017:

You’re just making the impression that this is a total coverup … Any company that would set up such a surreptitious system is just as suspicious as can be.

CNN Tech (11/28/17).

Judge Alsup was upset by both the cover-up of the Jacobs letter and by the contents of the letter. The letter essentially alleged a wide-spread criminal conspiracy to hide and destroy evidence in all litigation, not just the Waymo case, by various means, including use of: (1) specialized communication tools that encrypt and self-destruct ephemeral communications, such as instant messages; (2) personal electronic devices and accounts not traceable to the company; and, (3) fake attorney-client privilege claims. Judge Alsup reportedly opened the hearing on the request for continuance by admonishing attorneys that counsel in future cases can be “found in malpractice” if they do not turn over evidence from such specialized tools. Fortune (12/2/17). That is a fair warning to us all. For instance, do any of your key custodians use specialized self-destruct communications tools like Wickr or Telegram?

Qualcomm Case All Over Again?

The alleged hide-the-email conduct here looks like it might be a high-tech version of the infamous Qualcomm case in San Diego. Qualcomm Inc. v. Broadcom Corp., No. 05-CV-1958-B(BLM) Doc. 593 (S.D. Cal. Aug. 6, 2007); Qualcomm, Inc. v. Broadcom Corp., 2008 WL 66932 (S.D. Cal. Jan. 7, 2008) (Plaintiff Qualcomm intentionally withheld from production several thousand important emails, a fact not revealed until cross-examination at trial of one honest witness).

The same rules of professional conduct are, or may be, involved in both Qualcomm and Waymo (citing to ABA model rules).

RULE 3.3 CANDOR TOWARD THE TRIBUNAL
(a) A lawyer shall not knowingly:
(1) make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer; . . .
(b) A lawyer who represents a client in an adjudicative proceeding and who knows that a person intends to engage, is engaging or has engaged in criminal or fraudulent conduct related to the proceeding shall take reasonable remedial measures, including, if necessary, disclosure to the tribunal.

RULE 3.4 FAIRNESS TO OPPOSING PARTY AND COUNSEL
A lawyer shall not:
(a) unlawfully obstruct another party’s access to evidence or otherwise unlawfully alter, destroy, or conceal a document or other material that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is relevant to a pending or a reasonably foreseeable proceeding; nor counsel or assist another person to do any such act.

Although, as we will see, it looks so far as if Uber and its in-house attorneys are the ones who knew about the withheld documents and destruction scheme, and not Uber’s actual counsel of record. It all gets a little fuzzy to me with all of the many law firms involved, but so far the actual counsel of record for Uber claim to have been as surprised by the letter as Waymo’s attorneys, even though the letter was directed to Uber’s in-house legal counsel.

Sarbanes-Oxley Violations?

In addition to possible ethics violations in Waymo v. Uber, a contention was made by the attorneys for Uber consultant, Richard Jacobs, that Uber was hiding evidence in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, Pub. L. 107-204, § 802, 116 Stat. 745, 800 (2002), which states in relevant part:

whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

18 U.S.C. § 1519. The Sarbanes-Oxley applies to private companies and has a broad reach not limited to litigation that has been filed, much less formal discovery requests. Section 1519 “covers conduct intended to impede any federal investigation or proceeding including one not even on the verge of commencement.“ Yates v. United States, – U.S. –, 135 S.Ct. 1074, 1087 (2015).

The Astonishing “Richard Jacobs Letter” by Clayton Halunen

The alleged ethical and legal violations in Waymo LLC v. Uber Techs., Inc. are based upon Uber’s failure to produce a “smoking gun” type of letter (email) and the contents of that letter. Although the letter is referred to as the Jacobs letter, it was actually written by Clayton D. Halunen of Halunen Law (shown right), an attorney for Richard Jacobs, a former Uber employee and current Uber consultant. Although this 37-page letter dated May 5, 2017 was not written by Richard Jacobs, it purports to represent how Jacobs would testify to support employment claims he was making against Uber. It was provided to Uber’s in-house employment counsel, Angella Padilla, in lieu of an interview of Jacobs that she was seeking.

A redacted copy of the letter dated May 5, 2017, has been released to the public and is very interesting for many reasons. I did not add the yellow highlighting seen in this letter and am unsure who did.

In fairness to Uber I point out that the letter states on its face in all caps that it is a RULE 408 CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION FOR SETTLEMENT PURPOSES ONLY VIA EMAIL AND U.S. MAIL, a fact that does not appear to have been argued as a grounds for Uber not producing the letter to Waymo in Waymo v. Uber. That may be because Rule 408, FRCP, states that although such settlement communications are not admissible to “prove or disprove the validity or amount of a disputed claim or to impeach by a prior inconsistent statement or a contradiction” they are admissible “for another purpose, such as proving a witness’s bias or prejudice, negating a contention of undue delay, or proving an effort to obstruct a criminal investigation or prosecution.” Also, Rule 408 pertains to admissibility, not discoverability, and Rule 26(b)(1) still says that “Information within this scope of discovery need not be admissible in evidence to be discoverable.”

The letter claims that Richard Jacobs has a background in military intelligence, essentially a spy, although those portions of the letter were heavily redacted. I tend to believe this for several reasons, including the fact that I could not find a photograph of Jacobs anywhere. That is very rare. The letter goes on to describe the “unlawful activities within Uber’ s ThreatOps division.” Jacobs Letter at pg. 3. The illegal activities included fraud, theft, hacking, espionage and “knowing violations” of Sarbanes-Oxley by:

Uber’ s efforts to evade current and future discovery requests, court orders, and government investigations in violation of state and federal law as well as ethical rules governing the legal profession. Clark devised training and provided advice intended to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation of several ongoing lawsuits against Uber and in relation to or contemplation of further matters within the jurisdiction of the United States. …

Jacobs then became aware that Uber, primarily through Clark and Henley, had implemented a sophisticated strategy to destroy, conceal, cover up, and falsify records or documents with the intent to impede or obstruct government investigations as well as discovery obligations in pending and future litigation. Besides violating 18 U.S.C. § 15 19, this conduct constitutes an ethical violation.

Pages 5, 6 of Jacobs Letter. The practices included the alleged mandatory use of a program called WickrMe, that “programs messages to self-destruct in a matter of seconds to no longer than six days. Consequently, Uber employees cannot be compelled to produce records of their chat conversations because no record is retained.” Letter pg. 6.

Remember, Judge Alsup reportedly began the trial continuance hearing of November 28, 2017, by admonishing attorneys that in future cases they could be “found in malpractice” if they do not turn over evidence from such specialized communications tools. Fortune (12/2/17). There are a number of other secure messaging apps in adddition to Wickr that have encryption and self destruct features. A few I have found are:

There are also services on the web that will send self-destructing messages for you, such as PrivNote. This is a rapidly changing area so do your own due diligence.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi reacted to the November 29, 2017 hearing and Judge Alsup’s comments by tweeting on November 29, 2017 that Uber employees did, but no longer, use Wickr and another program like it, Telegram.

True that Wickr, Telegram were used often at Uber when I came in. As of Sept 27th I directed my teams NOT to use such Apps when discussing Uber-related business.

This seems like a good move to me on the part of Uber’s new CEO, a smart move. It is also an ethical move in a sometimes ethically challenged Silicon Valley culture. The culture is way too filled with selfish Ayn Rand devotees for my taste. I hope this leads to large scale housekeeping by Khosrowshahi. Matt Kallman, a spokesman for Uber, said after the public release of the letter:

While we haven’t substantiated all the claims in this letter — and, importantly, any related to Waymo — our new leadership has made clear that going forward we will compete honestly and fairly, on the strength of our ideas and technology.

NYT (12/15/17). You know the old saying about Fool me once …

Back to the Jacobs letter, it also alleges at pgs. 6-9 the improper use of fake attorney-client privilege to hide evidence:

Further, Clark and Henley directly instructed Jacobs to conceal documents in violation of Sarbanes-Oxley by attempting to “shroud” them with attorney-client privilege or work product protections. Clark taught the ThreatOps team that if they marked communications as “draft,” asked for a legal opinion at the beginning of an email, and simply wrote “attorney-client privilege” on documents, they would be immune from discovery.

The letter also alleges the intentional use of personal computers and accounts to conduct Uber business that they wanted to hide from disclosure. Letter pgs. 7-8.

The letter at pages 9-26 then details facts purporting to show illegal intelligence gathering activities by Uber on a global scale, violating multiple state and federal laws, including:

Economic Espionage Act
Uniform Trade Secret Act
California Uniform Trade Secrets Act
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO)
Wire Fraud law at 18 U.S.C § 1343, and California Penal Code § 528.5
Wiretap Act at 18 U .S.C. § 25 10 et seq.
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)

Special Master John L. Cooper

Judge Alsup referred the discovery issues raised by Uber’s non-disclosure of the “Jacobs Letter” to the Special Master handling many of the discovery disputes in this case, John L. Cooper of Farella Braun + Martel LLP. The Special Master Report with Cooper’s recommendations concerning the issues raised by the late disclosure of the letter is dated December 15, 2017. Cooper’s report is a public record that can be found here. This is his excellent introduction of the dispute found at pages 1-2 of his report.

The trial of this trade secrets case was continued for a second time after the belated discovery of inflammatory communications by a former Uber employee came to light outside the normal discovery process. On April 14, 2017, Richard Jacobs sent a resignation e-mail to Uber’s then-CEO and then-general counsel, among others, accusing Uber of having a dedicated division with a “mission” to “steal trade secrets in a series of code-named campaigns” and engaging in other allegedly wrongful or inappropriate conduct. A few weeks later, on May 5, 2017, Mr. Jacobs’ lawyer, Clayton Halunen, sent a letter to Angela Padilla, Uber’s Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Litigation and Employment. That 37-page letter expanded in some detail on Mr. Jacobs’ e-mailed accusations regarding clandestine and concerted efforts to steal competitors’ trade secrets, including those belonging to Waymo. It also addressed allegations touching on Anthony Levandowski’s alleged downloading of Waymo trade secrets. The Jacobs Letter laid out what his lawyer described as a set of hardware and software programs, and usage protocols that would help Uber to allegedly carry out its thefts and other corporate espionage in secret and with minimized risk of evidence remaining on Uber servers or devices. By mid-August Mr. Jacobs and Uber settled their disputes and executed a written settlement agreement on August 14-15,2017.

Despite extensive discovery and multiple Court orders to produce an extensive amount of information related to the accusations in the Jacobs Materials, Waymo did not learn of their existence until after November 22, when the Court notified the parties that a federal prosecutor wrote a letter to this Court disclosing the gist of the Jacobs allegations.

The Special Master’s report then goes on to analyze whether Uber was obligated to produce the Jacobs Materials in response to any of the Court’s prior orders or Waymo’s discovery requests. In short, Master Cooper concluded that they were not directly covered by any of the prior court orders, but the Jacobs Letter was responsive to certain discovery requests propounded by Waymo, and Uber was obligated to produce it in response to those requests.

Special Master Cooper goes on to describe at page 7 of his report the Jacobs letter by Halunen. To state the obvious, this is clearly a “hot” document with implications that go well beyond this particular case.

That 37-page letter set forth multiple allegations relating to alleged efforts by Uber individuals and divisions. Among other things, the letter alleges that Uber planned to use certain hardware devices and software to conceal the creation and destruction of corporate records that, as a result, “would never be subject to legal discovery.” See ECF No. 2307-2 at 7. These activities, Mr. Jacobs’ lawyer asserted, “implicate ongoing discovery disputes, such as those in Uber’s litigation with Waymo.” Id. at 9. He continued:

Specifically, Jacobs recalls that Jake Nocon, Nick Gicinto, and Ed Russo went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to educate Uber’s Autonomous Vehicle Group on using the above practices with the specific intent of preventing Uber’s unlawful schemes from seeing the light of day.

Jacobs’ observations cast doubt on Uber’s representation in court proceedings that no documents evidencing wrongdoing can be found on Uber’s systems and that other communications are actually shielded by the attorney-client privilege. Aarian Marshall, Judge in Waymo Dispute Lets Uber’s Self-driving Program Live—for Now, wired.com (May 3, 2017 at 8:47p.m.) (“Lawyers for Waymo also said Uber had blocked the release of 3,500 documents related to the acquisition of Otto on the grounds that they contain privileged information …. Waymo also can’t quite pin down whether Uber employees saw the stolen documents or if those documents moved anywhere beyond the computer Levandowski allegedly used to steal them. (Uber lawyers say extensive searches of their company’s system for anything connected to the secrets comes up nil.)”), available at (citation omitted).

Id. at 9-10.

Uber Attorney Angela Padilla

Angella Padilla was Uber’s Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Litigation and Employment. She testified on these issues. Here is Special Master Cooper’s summary at pages 8-9 of his report:

Ms. Padilla testified in this Court that she read the letter “in brief’ and turned it over to other Uber attorneys, including Ms. Yoo, to begin an internal investigation. Nov. 29, 2017 Hr’g Tr. at 15:17-24. The letter also made its way to two separate committees of Uber’s Board of Directors, including the committee that was or is overseeing special litigation, including this case and the Jacobs matter. Id. at 20:10-13; 26:23-25. On June 27, Uber disclosed the allegations in the Jacobs Letter to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California. Id. at 27:20-14. It disclosed the Jacobs Letter itself on or around September 12 to the same U.S. Attorney’s Office, to another U.S. Attorney, in the Southern District of New York, and to the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington. Id. at 28:4-10. Ms. Padilla testified that Uber made these disclosures to multiple prosecutors “to take the air out of [Jacobs’] extortionist balloon.” Id. at 28:18-19. Nearly one month before that distribution of the letter to federal prosecutors, on August 14, Uber settled with Mr. Jacobs—the terms of which included $4.5 million in compensation to Jacobs and $3 million to his lawyers. See id. at 62:6-63-12.

I have to pause here for a minute because the settlement amount takes my breath away. Not only the payment of $4.5 Million to Richard Jacobs who had a salary of $130,000 per year, but also the additional payment of $3.0 million dollars to his lawyers. That’s an incredible sum for writing a couple of letters, although I am sure they would claim to have put much more into their representation than meets the eye.

Other Attorneys for Uber Involved

Back to Special Master Cooper’s summary of the testimony of Uber attorney Padilla and other facts in the record about attorney knowledge of the “smoking gun” Jacobs letter (footnotes omitted):

Uber distributed the Jacobs E-Mail to two of Uber’s counsel of record at Morrison Foerster (“MoFo”) in this case. See Dec. 4, 2017 Hr’g Tr. at 46:1-47:5. Other MoFo attorneys directly involved in this case and related discovery issues e-mailed with other MoFo attorneys in late April about “Uber’s ediscovery systems regarding potential investigation into Jacobs resignation letter.” See Waymo Ex. 21.

None of the Uber outside counsel working on this case got a copy of the Jacobs Letter. Neither did the two Uber in-house lawyers who were or are handling this case; Ms. Padilla testified that she did not send it to them. Nov. 29, 2017 Hr’g Tr. at 47:8-16. By late June, some attorneys from Boies Schiller and Flexner, also counsel in this matter for Uber, had discussions with other outside counsel and Ms. Padilla about issues arising from the internal investigation triggered by the Jacobs Materials. See Waymo Ex. 20, Entries 22-22(h).

So now you know the names of the attorneys involved, and not involved, according to Special Master Cooper at page 9 of his report. Apparently none of the actual counsel of record knew about it. I would have to assume, and I think the court will too, that this was intentional. It was so clever as to be obvious, or, as the British would say too clever by half.

U.S. Attorney Notifies Judge Alsup of the Jacobs Letter

To complete the procedural background, here is what happened next leading to the referral to the Special Master. Note that a U.S. Attorney taking action like this to notify a District Court Judge of a piece of evidence is extraordinary, especially to do so just before a trial. Judge Alsup said that he had never had such a thing happen in his courtroom. The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California is Brian Stretch. Obviously he was concerned about the fairness of Uber’s actions. In my opinion this was a good call by Stretch.

On November 22, 2017, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California notified this Court of the Jacobs allegations and specifically referenced the account Jacobs put in his letter about the efforts to keep the Ottomotto acquisition secret. See ECF No. 2383. The Court on the same day issued an order disclosing receipt of the letter from the U.S. Attorney and asked the parties to inform the Court about the extent of any prior disclosure of the Jacobs allegations. See ECF Nos. 2260-2261. After continuing the trial date in light of the parties’ responses to that query, the Court on December 4, 2017, ordered the Special Master “to determine whether and to what extent, including the history of this action and both sides’ past conduct, defendants were required to earlier produce the Jacobs letter, resignation email, or settlement agreement, or required to provide any information in those documents in response to interrogatories, Court orders, or other agreements among counsel.” ECF No. 2334, 2341.

Special Master report at pgs. 9-10.

Special Master Cooper’s Recommended Ruling

Master Cooper found that the Richard Jacobs letter was responsive to two of Waymos’ requests to produce: RFP 29 and RFP 73. He rejected Uber’s argument that they were not responsive to any request, an argument that must have been difficult to make concerning a document this hot. They tried to make the argument seem more reasonable by saying that even if the letter was “generally relevant,” it was not responsive. Then they cite to cases standing for the proposition that you have no duty to produce relevant documents that you are not going to rely on, namely documents adverse to your position, unless they are specifically requested. Here is a quote of the conclusion of that argument from page 16 of Uber’s Response to Waymo’s Submission to Special Master Cooper Re the Jacobs Documents.

Congress has specified in Rule 26(a)(ii) what documents must be unilaterally produced, and they are only those that a party “may use to support its claims or defenses.” Thus, a party cannot use a document against an adversary at trial that the party failed to disclose. However, Rule 26 very pointedly does not require the production of any documents other than those that a party plans to use “to support” its claims. Obviously, Uber is not seeking to use any of the documents at issue to support its claims. If Waymo believes that this rule should be changed, that is an issue they need to address with Congress, not with the Court.

Master Cooper did not address that argument because he found the documents were in fact both relevant and directly responsive to two of Waymo’s requests for production.

Uber’s attorney also made what I consider a novel argument that even if the Jacobs letter was found to be responsive, they still did have to produce it because, get this – it did not include any of the keywords that they agreed to use to search for documents in those categories. Incredible. What difference does that make, if they knew about the document anyway? Their client, Uber, specifically including in-house counsel, Ms. Padilla, clearly knew about it. The letter was to her. Are they suggesting that Uber did not know about the letter because some of their outside counsel did not know about it? Special Master Cooper must have had the same reaction as he disposed of this argument in short order at page 17 of his report:

Uber argues, that in some scenarios, reliance on search terms is enough to satisfy a party’s obligation to find responsive documents. See, e.g., T.D.P. v. City of Oakland, No, 16-cv-04132-LB, 2017 WL 3026925, at *5 (N.D. Cal. July 17, 2017) (finding certain search terms adequate for needs of case). But I find there are two main reasons why an exclusive focus on the use of search terms is inappropriate for determining whether the Jacobs Letter should have been produced in response to RFP 29 and RFP 73.

First, the parties never reached an agreement to limit their obligation to searching for documents to only those documents that hit on agreed-upon search terms. See Waymo Ex. 5 (Uber counsel telling Waymo during search-term negotiations that “Waymo has an obligation to conduct a reasonable search for responsive documents separate and apart from any search term negotiations”). (Emphasis added)

Second, Uber needed no such help in finding the Jacobs Materials. They were not stowed away in a large volume of data on some server. They were not stashed in some low-level employee’s files. Parties agree to use search terms and to look into the records of the most likely relevant custodians to help manage the often unwieldy process of searching through massive amounts of data. These methods are particularly called for when a party, instead of merely having to look for a needle in a haystack, faces the prospect of having to look for lots of needles in lots of haystacks. This needle was in Uber’s hands the whole time.

I would add that this needle was stuck deep into their hands, such that they were bleeding profusely. Maybe the outside attorneys did not see it, but Uber sure did and they had a duty to advise their attorneys. Uber’s attorneys would have been better off saving their powder for attacking the accuracy of the contents of the Jacobs letter and talking about the fast pace of discovery. They did that, but only as a short concluding argument, almost an afterthought. See page 16-19 of Uber’s Response to Waymo’s Submission to Special Master Cooper Re the Jacobs Documents.

Here is another theoretical argument that Uber’s lawyers threw up and Cooper’s practical response at pages 17-18 of his report:

Uber argues that it cannot be that the mere possession and knowledge of a relevant document must trigger a duty to scrutinize it and see if it matches any discovery requests. It asked at the December 12, 2017, hearing before the Special Master: Should every client be forced to instruct every one of its employees to turn over every e-mail and document to satisfy its discovery obligations to produce relevant and responsive documents? Must every head of litigation for every company regularly confronted with discovery obligations search their files for responsive documents, notwithstanding any prior agreement with the requesting party to search for responsive documents by the use of search terms?

It is not easy, in the abstract, to determine where the line regarding the scope of discovery search should be drawn. But this is not a case involving mere possession of some document. The facts in this case suggest that Ms. Padilla knew of the Jacobs Letter at the time Uber had to respond to discovery requests calling for its production—it certainly was “reasonably accessible.” Mr. Jacobs’ correspondence alleged systemic, institutionalized, and criminal efforts by Uber to conceal evidence and steal trade secrets, and not just as a general matter but also specifically involving the evidence and trade secrets at issue in this case—maybe the largest and most significant lawsuit Uber has ever faced. Ms. Padilla, Uber’s vice president and deputy general counsel for litigation and employment received the Jacobs Materials around the same time that discovery in this case was picking up and around the same time that the Court partially granted Waymo’s requested provisional relief. Shortly after that, Uber told federal prosecutors about the Jacobs allegations and then later sent them a copy of the letter. It sent the materials to outside counsel, including lawyers at MoFo that Uber hired to investigate the allegations. Two separate Uber board committees got involved, including the committee overseeing this case. Uber paid Mr. Jacobs $4.5 million, and his lawyer $3 million, to settle his claims.

The Federal Rules obligate a party to produce known, relevant and reasonably accessible material that on its face is likely to be responsive to discovery requests. RFP 29 and RFP 73 were served on Uber on May 9, just a few days after Ms. Padilla received the Jacobs Letter on May 5. Uber was therefore obligated to conduct a reasonable inquiry into those requests (and all others it received) to see if it had documents responsive to those requests and produce non-privileged responsive documents.

Special Master John Cooper concluded by finding that the “Jacobs letter was responsive to Waymo’s Request for Production No. 29 and Request for Production No. 73, and Uber should have produced it to Waymo in response to those requests.” It was beyond the scope of his assignment as Special Master to determine the appropriate remedy. Uber will now probably challenge this report and Judge William Alsup will rule.

Like everyone else, I expect Judge Alsup will agree with Cooper’s report. The real question is what remedy will he provide to Waymo and what sanctions, if any, will Judge Alsuop impose.

Conclusion

At the hearing on the request for a trial delay on November 28, 2017, Judge William Alsup reportedly told Uber’s in-house attorney, Angella Padilla:

Maybe you’re in trouble … This document should have been produced … You wanted this case to go to trial so that they didn’t have the document, then it turns out the U.S. attorney did an unusual thing. Maybe the guy [Jacobs] is a disgruntled employee but that’s not your decision to make, that’s the jury’s.

The Recorder (November 29, 2017).

In response to Angella Padilla saying that Jacobs was just a “extortionist” and the allegations in his letter were untrue. Judge Alsup reportedly responded by saying:

Here’s the way it looks … You said it was a fantastic BS letter with no merit and yet you paid $4.5 million. To someone like me and people out there, mortals, that’s a lot of money, that’s a lot of money. And people don’t pay that kind of money for BS and you certainly don’t hire them as consultant if you think everything they’ve got to contribute is BS. On the surface it looks like you covered this up.

The Recorder (November 29, 2017).

Judge William Alsup is one of the finest judges on the federal bench today. He is a man of unquestioned integrity and intellectual acumen. He is a Harvard Law graduate, class of 1971, and former Law clerk for Justice William O. Douglas, Supreme Court of the United States, 1971-1972. How Judge Alsup reacts to the facts in Waymo LLC v. Uber Techs., Inc. now that he has the report of Special Master Cooper will likely have a profound impact on e-discovery and legal ethics for years to come.

No matter what actions Judge Alsup takes next, the actions of Uber and its attorneys in this case will be discussed for many years to come. Did the attorneys’ non-disclosure violate Rule of Professional Conduct 3.3, Candor Toward the Tribunal? Did they violate Rule 3.4, Fairness to Opposing Party and Counsel? Also, what about Rule 26(g) Federal Rules of Civil Procedure? Other rules of ethics and procedure? Did Uber’s actions violate the Sarbanes-Oxley Act? Other laws? Was it fraud?

Finally, and these are critical questions, did Uber breach their duty to preserve evidence when they knew that litigation was reasonably likely? Did their attorneys do so if they knew of these practices? What sanctions are appropriate for destruction of evidence under Rule 37(e) and the Court’s inherent authority? Should an adverse inference be imposed? A default judgment?

The preservation related issues are big questions that I suspect Judge Alsup will now address. These issues and his rulings, and that of other judges who will likely face the same issues soon in other cases, will impact many corporations, not just Uber. The use of software such as Wickr and Telegram is apparently already wide-spread. In what circumstances and for what types of communications may the use of such technologies place a company (or individual) at risk for severe sanctions in later litigation? Personally, I oppose intentionally ephemeral devices, where all information self-destructs, but, at the same time, I strongly support the right of encryption and privacy. It is a question of balance between openness and truth on the one hand, and privacy and security on the other. How attorneys and judges respond to these competing challenges will impact the quality of justice and life in America for many years to come.

2 Comments | Evidence, Lawyers Duties, Review, Spoliation/Sanctions, Technology | Tagged: best practices, cybersecurity, discovery, document review, ethics, evidence, justice, law, legal profession, legal search, preservation, sanctions, technology, truth | Permalink
Posted by Ralph Losey

WHY I LOVE PREDICTIVE CODING: Making Document Review Fun Again with Mr. EDR and Predictive Coding 4.0

December 3, 2017

Many lawyers and technologists like predictive coding and recommend it to their colleagues. They have good reasons. It has worked for them. It has allowed them to do e-discovery reviews in an effective, cost efficient manner, especially the big projects. That is true for me too, but that is not why I love predictive coding. My feelings come from the excitement, fun, and amazement that often arise from seeing it in action, first hand. I love watching the predictive coding features in my software find documents that I could never have found on my own. I love the way the AI in the software helps me to do the impossible. I really love how it makes me far smarter and skilled than I really am.

I have been getting those kinds of positive feelings consistently by using the latest Predictive Coding 4.0 methodology (shown right) and KrolLDiscovery’s latest eDiscovery.com Review software (“EDR”). So too have my e-Discovery Team members who helped me to participate in TREC 2015 and 2016 (the great science experiment for the latest text search techniques sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology). During our grueling forty-five days of experiments in 2015, and again for sixty days in 2016, we came to admire the intelligence of the new EDR software so much that we decided to personalize the AI as a robot. We named him Mr. EDR out of respect. He even has his own website now, MrEDR.com, where he explains how he helped my e-Discovery Team in the 2015 and 2015 TREC Total Recall Track experiments.

Bottom line for us from this research was to prove and improve our methods. Our latest version 4.0 of Predictive Coding, Hybrid Multimodal IST Method is the result. We have even open-sourced this method, well most of it, and teach it in a free seventeen-class online program: TARcourse.com. Aside from testing and improving our methods, another, perhaps even more important result of TREC for us was our rediscovery that with good teamwork, and good software like Mr. EDR at your side, document review need never be boring again. The documents themselves may well be boring as hell, that’s another matter, but the search for them need not be.

How and Why Predictive Coding is Fun

Steps Four, Five and Six of the standard eight-step workflow for Predictive Coding 4.0 is where we work with the active machine-learning features of Mr. EDR. These are its predictive coding features, a type of artificial intelligence. We train the computer on our conception of relevance by showing it relevant and irrelevant documents that we have found. The software is designed to then go out and find all other relevant documents in the total dataset. One of the skills we learn is when we have taught enough and can stop the training and complete the document review. At TREC we call that the Stop decision. It is important to keep down the costs of document review.

We use a multimodal approach to find training documents, meaning we use all of the other search features of Mr. EDR to find relevant ESI, such as keyword searches, similarity and concept. We iterate the training by sample documents, both relevant and irrelevant, until the computer starts to understand the scope of relevance we have in mind. It is a training exercise to make our AI smart, to get it to understand the basic ideas of relevance for that case. It usually takes multiple rounds of training for Mr. EDR to understand what we have in mind. But he is a fast learner, and by using the latest hybrid multimodal IST (“intelligently spaced learning“) techniques, we can usually complete his training in a few days. At TREC, where we were moving fast after hours with the Ã-Team, we completed some of the training experiments in just a few hours.

After a while Mr. EDR starts to “get it,” he starts to really understand what we are after, what we think is relevant in the case. That is when a happy shock and awe type moment can happen. That is when Mr. EDR’s intelligence and search abilities start to exceed our own. Yes. It happens. The pupil then starts to evolve beyond his teachers. The smart algorithms start to see patterns and find evidence invisible to us. At that point we sometimes even let him train himself by automatically accepting his top-ranked predicted relevant documents without even looking at them. Our main role then is to determine a good range for the automatic acceptance and do some spot-checking. We are, in effect, allowing Mr. EDR to take over the review. Oh what a feeling to then watch what happens, to see him keep finding new relevant documents and keep getting smarter and smarter by his own self-programming. That is the special AI-high that makes it so much fun to work with Predictive Coding 4.0 and Mr. EDR.

It does not happen in every project, but with the new Predictive Coding 4.0 methods and the latest Mr. EDR, we are seeing this kind of transformation happen more and more often. It is a tipping point in the review when we see Mr. EDR go beyond us. He starts to unearth relevant documents that my team would never even have thought to look for. The relevant documents he finds are sometimes completely dissimilar to any others we found before. They do not have the same keywords, or even the same known concepts. Still, Mr. EDR sees patterns in these documents that we do not. He can find the hidden gems of relevance, even outliers and black swans, if they exist. When he starts to train himself, that is the point in the review when we think of Mr. EDR as going into superhero mode. At least, that is the way my young e-Discovery Team members likes to talk about him.

By the end of many projects the algorithmic functions of Mr. EDR have attained a higher intelligence and skill level than our own (at least on the task of finding the relevant evidence in the document collection). He is always lighting fast and inexhaustible, even untrained, but by the end of his training, he becomes a search genius. Watching Mr. EDR in that kind of superhero mode is what makes Predictive Coding 4.0 a pleasure.

The Empowerment of AI Augmented Search

It is hard to describe the combination of pride and excitement you feel when Mr. EDR, your student, takes your training and then goes beyond you. More than that, the super-AI you created then empowers you to do things that would have been impossible before, absurd even. That feels pretty good too. You may not be Iron Man, or look like Robert Downey, but you will be capable of remarkable feats of legal search strength.

For instance, using Mr. EDR as our Iron Man-like suits, my e-discovery Ã-Team of three attorneys was able to do thirty different review projects and classify 17,014,085 documents in 45 days. See 2015 TREC experiment summary at Mr. EDR. We did these projects mostly at nights, and on weekends, while holding down our regular jobs. What makes this crazy impossible, is that we were able to accomplish this by only personally reviewing 32,916 documents. That is less than 0.2% of the total collection. That means we relied on predictive coding to do 99.8% of our review work. Incredible, but true.

Using traditional linear review methods it would have taken us 45 years to review that many documents! Instead, we did it in 45 days. Plus our recall and precision rates were insanely good. We even scored 100% precision and 100% recall in one TREC project in 2015 and two more in 2016. You read that right. Perfection. Many of our other projects attained scores in the high and mid nineties. We are not saying you will get results like that. Every project is different, and some are much more difficult than others. But we are saying that this kind of AI-enhanced review is not only fast and efficient, it is effective.

Yes, it’s pretty cool when your little AI creation does all the work for you and makes you look good. Still, no robot could do this without your training and supervision. We are a team, which is why we call it hybrid multimodal, man and machine.

Having Fun with Scientific Research at TREC 2015 and 2016

During the 2015 TREC Total Recall Track experiments my team would sometimes get totally lost on a few of the really hard Topics. We were not given legal issues to search, as usual. They were arcane technical hacker issues, political issues, or local news stories. Not only were we in new fields, the scope of relevance of the thirty Topics was never really explained. (We were given one to three word explanations in 2015, in 2016 we got a whole sentence!) We had to figure out intended relevance during the project based on feedback from the automated TREC document adjudication system. We would have some limited understanding of relevance based on our suppositions of the initial keyword hints, and so we could begin to train Mr. EDR with that. But, in several Topics, we never had any real understanding of exactly what TREC thought was relevant.

This was a very frustrating situation at first, but, and here is the cool thing, even though we did not know, Mr. EDR knew. That’s right. He saw the TREC patterns of relevance hidden to us mere mortals. In many of the thirty Topics we would just sit back and let him do all of the driving, like a Google car. We would often just cheer him on (and each other) as the TREC systems kept saying Mr. EDR was right, the documents he selected were relevant. The truth is, during much of the 45 days of TREC we were like kids in a candy store having a great time. That is when we decided to give Mr. EDR a cape and superhero status. He never let us down. It is a great feeling to create an AI with greater intelligence than your own and then see it augment and improve your legal work. It is truly a hybrid human-machine partnership at its best.

I hope you get the opportunity to experience this for yourself someday. The TREC experiments in 2015 and 2016 on recall in predictive coding are over, but the search for truth and justice goes on in lawsuits across the country. Try it on your next document review project.

Do What You Love and Love What You Do

Mr. EDR, and other good predictive coding software like it, can augment our own abilities and make us incredibly productive. This is why I love predictive coding and would not trade it for any other legal activity I have ever done (although I have had similar highs from oral arguments that went great, or the rush that comes from winning a big case).

The excitement of predictive coding comes through clearly when Mr. EDR is fully trained and able to carry on without you. It is a kind of Kurzweilian mini-singularity event. It usually happens near the end of the project, but can happen earlier when your computer catches on to what you want and starts to find the hidden gems you missed. I suggest you give Predictive Coding 4.0 and Mr. EDR a try. To make it easier I open-sourced our latest method and created an online course. TARcourse.com. It will teach anyone our method, if they have the right software. Learn the method, get the software and then you too can have fun with evidence search. You too can love what you do. Document review need never be boring again.

Caution

One note of caution: most e-discovery vendors, including the largest, do not have active machine learning features built into their document review software. Even the few that have active machine learning do not necessarily follow the Hybrid Multimodal IST Predictive Coding 4.0 approach that we used to attain these results. They instead rely entirely on machine-selected documents for training, or even worse, rely entirely on random selected documents to train the software, or have elaborate unnecessary secret control sets.

The algorithms used by some vendors who say they have “predictive coding” or “artificial intelligence” are not very good. Scientists tell me that some are only dressed-up concept search or unsupervised document clustering. Only bona fide active machine learning algorithms create the kind of AI experience that I am talking about. Software for document review that does not have any active machine learning features may be cheap, and may be popular, but they lack the power that I love. Without active machine learning, which is fundamentally different from just “analytics,” it is not possible to boost your intelligence with AI. So beware of software that just says it has advanced analytics. Ask if it has “active machine learning“?

It is impossible to do the things described in this essay unless the software you are using has active machine learning features. This is clearly the way of the future. It is what makes document review enjoyable and why I love to do big projects. It turns scary to fun.

So, if you tried “predictive coding” or “advanced analytics” before, and it did not work for you, it could well be the software’s fault, not yours. Or it could be the poor method you were following. The method that we developed in Da Silva Moore, where my firm represented the defense, was a version 1.0 method. Da Silva Moore v. Publicis Groupe, 287 F.R.D. 182, 183 (S.D.N.Y. 2012). We have come a long way since then. We have eliminated unnecessary random control sets and gone to continuous training, instead of train then review. This is spelled out in the TARcourse.com that teaches our latest version 4.0 techniques.

The new 4.0 methods are not hard to follow. The TARcourse.com puts our methods online and even teaches the theory and practice. And the 4.0 methods certainly will work. We have proven that at TREC, but only if you have good software. With just a little training, and some help at first from consultants (most vendors with bona fide active machine learning features will have good ones to help), you can have the kind of success and excitement that I am talking about.

Do not give up if it does not work for you the first time, especially in a complex project. Try another vendor instead, one that may have better software and better consultants. Also, be sure that your consultants are Predictive Coding 4.0 experts, and that you follow their advice. Finally, remember that the cheapest software is almost never the best, and, in the long run will cost you a small fortune in wasted time and frustration.

Conclusion

Love what you do. It is a great feeling and sure fire way to job satisfaction and success. With these new predictive coding technologies it is easier than ever to love e-discovery. Try them out. Treat yourself to the AI high that comes from using smart machine learning software and fast computers. There is nothing else like it. If you switch to the 4.0 methods and software, you too can know that thrill. You can watch an advanced intelligence, which you helped create, exceed your own abilities, exceed anyone’s abilities. You can sit back and watch Mr. EDR complete your search for you. You can watch him do so in record time and with record results. It is amazing to see good software find documents that you know you would never have found on your own.

Predictive coding AI in superhero mode can be exciting to watch. Why deprive yourself of that? Who says document review has to be slow and boring? Start making the practice of law fun again.

Here is the PDF version of this article, which you may download and distribute, so long as you do not revise it or charge for it.