Ray Biederman, President of DiscoveryMaster, joins George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal, as part of a special ACEDS #eDiscoveryLeadersLive series broadcast from ILTACON 2022.
Ray Biederman is the co-founder and CEO of Proteus Discovery Group, an eDiscovery services and consulting firm, and DiscoveryMaster, a software product that automates project statistics and QC metrics for document review projects. Ray maintains an active litigation practice, primarily as eDiscovery counsel for clients facing complex and multidistrict litigation; he is a testifying expert, an adjunct lecturer on Indiana University’s Indianapolis campus – and he plays violin in a rock band.
Ray started our discussion with an overview of his career, from music to eDiscovery. He described the two organizations he heads, Proteus and DiscoveryMaster. Then he discussed his experiences with TAR, when and why it is and is not adopted, and how to encourage its use. From there he discussed other forms of AI such as concept and sentiment analysis, and how they have been able to put those capabilities to good use. Finally, Ray returned to DiscoveryMaster, to talk about the metrics they make available and how those help litigants.
Key Highlights
- [2:37] An overview of Ray’s career, from musician to eDiscovery service and software.
- [5:00] Proteus explained.
- [5:52] DiscoveryMaster explained.
- [6:51] The impact of ongoing eDiscovery service provider mergers and acquisitions: an opportunity for secondary people to establish a brand.
- [8:35] TAR adoption rates.
- [10:02] How he helps lawyers new to TAR understand what it is and how to be comfortable with it.
- [11:28] The four quadrants of TAR.
- [12:33] Helping lawyers understand TAR versus search terms.
- [13:40] TAR 1.0 pros and cons.
- [15:14] TAR 2.0 pros and cons.
- [16:10] Where in the life of a lawsuit eDiscovery meet and confers take place.
- [16:48] When clients hesitate to use TAR.
- [17:26] When the other side doesn’t want TAR used.
- [18:08] Adoption of AI other than TAR: concepts, sentiment analysis, unusual hours.
- [20:15] How he helps clients understand AI and why they should consider using them.
- [21:23] DiscoveryMaster, the metrics it makes available, and how those help.
Key Quotes
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- “[At Proteus,] where we’ve seen a lot of success is moving into those smaller markets like Indianapolis and providing services to big firms that need it in that market. We’ve seen our Midwest-based approach spidering out into these secondary markets.”
- “I think that there’s a lot of hesitation still [about using TAR] … because people look at it as a black box. Putting my litigator hat on I say, ‘I’ve got to go explain this black box to a judge’ and that’s never a good combination.”
- “What will help drive adoption [of TAR] is deeper partnerships with service providers where people can really explain how the process works better any maybe have someone testify as an expert.”
- “You can put in place whatever [TAR] technology you want. At the end of the day, it doesn’t replace the judgment of the attorney and that’s the biggest hurdle to get over. People think that a computer is going to make all the decisions for me but really they’re not.”
- “I think the big pro [of TAR 2.0] is you start to see tangible very early in the process. You start reviewing, you start ranking, its updating that rank all the time.”
- “We actually had a case where [when we used AI] it took about six clicks and we got to the 187 email out of 600,000 that were key.”
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