eDiscovery Leaders Live: Caroline Sweeney of Dorsey & Whitney
Caroline Sweeney, Director, Knowledge Management/Innovation at Dorsey & Whitney, joins George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal, for ACEDS #eDiscoveryLeadersLive.
Caroline is responsible for the delivery of Dorsey’s eDiscovery services, including LegalMine Managed Review services, litigation technology support, and trial technology support. Caroline is a member of Dorsey’s Electronic Discovery Practice Group and the Cybersecurity, Privacy and Social Media Practice Group. She has extensive experience consulting with attorneys and clients with regard to eDiscovery, including identification, preservation, collection, processing, review, and production of electronically stored information. Her 25+ years of experience in the litigation support industry include working in the law firm and litigation support vendor environments.
Caroline started by taking us on a walk down memory lane, discussing the evolution of eDiscovery from all-papers days to where we are today as well has her voyage along the way. She then talked about Dorsey’s current eDiscovery offerings and the expansion of those capabilities into other areas in the firm such as knowledge management. Caroline shared what keeps her up at night – at least as far as eDiscovery goes. Next, she talked analytics: the internal education they offer, using analytics throughout the life of a matter, and continuous active learning as a standard operating procedure. She warned that while analytics is an easier button, it is no easy button, then she shifted to discussing the use of analytics outside of litigation and investigations. Finally, Caroline offered her take on the ideal eDiscovery platform.
Key Highlights
- [3:36] The evolution of the eDiscovery industry – the early pre-E days.
- [5:06] Adding in computers – but to track information gathered from paper files.
- [5:39] Using the cloud before there was The Cloud.
- [6:38] And then law firms started to use PCs, and PC databases.
- [9:14] Introducing eDiscovery managed services at Dorsey, fourteen years ago.
- [9:45] Dorsey’s current eDiscovery offerings.
- [10:17] An expansion into knowledge management and innovation.
- [11:08] What keeps her up at night – collaboration platforms data, modern attachments.
- [14:06] Delivering internal education on analytics, beginning at the start of a matter.
- [15:55] Using analytics – including predictive coding and continuous active learning – in review.
- [17:10] Using analytics for quality control.
- [17:27] Analytics tools as a way of adding the most value in strategic decision-making.
- [18:11] What it means to use CAL as a standard operating procedure.
- [19:27] Knowing when to stop a CAL process – when enough is enough.
- [21:13] Doing quality control throughout the CAL process – looking at conflicts and sampling decisions.
- [22:26] Analytics – an easier button, but not an easy button.
- [23:39] Using analytics outside of litigation and investigations.
- [25:33] More about ongoing internal and external education about using legal technology.
- [26:23] Her ideal eDiscovery platform.
Key Quotes
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- “About fourteen years ago…we introduced an eDiscovery managed service offering called LegalMine. We do managed review, kind of the project management work I was doing back at Quorum in the day. I developed that offering. Now, as that has taken off and solidified within the firm…, we’ve seen the application of the technology to other practice areas.”
- “I work a lot now not just with our advocacy group, which is labor and employment and litigation and what have you, but also with the corporate side of the firm. And then a few years ago the firm decided that they wanted to introduce a formal knowledge management program.”
- “We are big adopters, heavy users, of the analytics tools in our platform…. Every month we do different programs around eDiscovery. We call is the DorC Discovery Bootcamp, and last month we actually did one on analytics and using analytics from the start as part of your early data assessment program.”
- “We’ve certainly used traditional predictive coding when it’s been [matters] like second requests, but standard operating procedure is for us to use continuous active learning in any document review…. We look at is as a prioritization tool.”
- “When you go through that validation process, it starts to reinforce that the [analytics] tool is accurate.”
- “That’s the other part of the job I love. You really have to be educating people about your capabilities and what you can do and your success stories…. It’s a way to add value not just to clients but within the firm.”