eDiscovery Leaders Live: Scott Milner of Morgan Lewis
Scott Milner, a partner at Morgan Lewis, joins George Socha, Senior Vice President of Brand Awareness at Reveal, for ACEDS #eDiscoveryLeadersLive.
Scott Milner is a Chambers ranked litigator and legal entrepreneur who has practiced at the intersection of law, technology, and design for nearly two decades. Scott is the co-leader and one of the original attorneys of Morgan Lewis’s eData practice, a data-driven practice that combines great lawyering with technology and design to enhance the delivery of legal services. Scott counsels and advises companies in electronic discovery and information governance processes and best practices and is a frequent speaker on topics in the discovery, innovation and disruption space. Scott was recently recognized as an AI Visionary, a finalist as an Attorney Tech Evangelist, recognized as a Legal Technology Trailblazer, and Scott’s LATHOS application won the Tech-Enabled Litigation Department of the Year award at the 2022 Legalweek’s Leaders in Tech Law Awards.
Scott started the discussion by sharing how he became an eDiscovery and described Morgan Lewis’ eDiscovery practice. He then talked about the use of technology to address new challenges and to redefine how we deliver legal services, focusing on identifying problems, developing processes, and leveraging technology to help. Scott offered examples of the capabilities they use, such as anomaly detection and sentiment analysis. He then turned to using eDiscovery AI technology to tackle challenges outside of core eDiscovery, in areas such as contacts and transactions. From there, Scott gazed into his crystal ball, offering thoughts on where these capabilities may take us, and closed with comments on using one’s professional and personal brand to better connect with clients.
Key Highlights
- [2:31] How Scott became an eDiscovery attorney.
- [4:42] Morgan Lewis’s eDiscovery practice.
- [5:28] Incorporating technology: problem, process, and only then technology.
- [7:05] Problems: differences between internal investigations and litigation eDiscovery.
- [8:25] Processes for investigations: turning to AI and automation.
- [9:52] Anomaly detection: what he means by it and how they use it.
- [11:34] Types of anomalies they look for.
- [12:41] Next steps after identifying an anomaly potentially of value.
- [13:48] How to know when you have done enough.
- [15:13] Sentiment analysis: what it is and how they use it.
- [16:55] Artificial intelligence or augmented intelligence?
- [17:28] Uses that go beyond traditional eDiscovery: contracts, data incidents, data privacy.
- [19:39] How well AI tools work in these areas.
- [21:07] Using AI with contract analysis.
- [22:21] Gazing into the crystal ball murkily: future use of eDiscovery AI technologies inside and outside traditional eDiscovery.
- [23:51] Gazing into the crystal ball murkily: how changing technology will affect Morgan Lewis and other law firms.
- [25:01] Using professional and personal branding to create and foster relationships.
Key Quotes by Scott Milner
- “Once we identify the problem, we build processes around it. At that point, then we look for the technology to actually support driving that process to make sure we’re delivering services. We can do it in a competitive way. The clients feel like it’s a win and we’ve not only reduced risk but we offered value both internally and externally.”
- “We’ve prebuilt a lot of automation. Once we run Brainspace we’ve got automated reports and dashboards that our attorneys who are actually knee-deep in the investigation can leverage: these are the 50 documents I need to review right away and then we’ll figure out where we go from there.”
- “Depending on what I’m trying to find, I focus in on the anomalies that are presented to me for consideration and then I can address what makes the most sense to truly spend time reviewing and analyzing further.”
- “When people say ‘AI’, I know people are very big on the word ‘artificial’. I still believe in the word ‘augmented’ intelligence. It still needs input. It still needs feedback. Anybody that’s going in saying, ‘this is going to solve my problem, I’m not going to do anything to give it feedback, to help learn’, I think will miss the boat.”
- “We’ve been quite happy that [AI technology] has absolutely been a value add, another tool in our tool shed, to support these other areas of opportunity and really to support our clients.”