Articles on search by OrcaTec’s Herb Roitblat are rare, but worth waiting for. I would much rather point you to his article, and to the articles by Ralph Losey to which they refer, than try and write them myself.
I have just been invited to contribute to a book about a subject which falls within my area of interest and competence, which would involve research and analysis of the kind that my training fits me for, and which would add lustre to my CV. I have declined the kind invitation with some regret. There is one overriding practical reason for this – there are only seven days in the week and I keep meeting the dog queueing for his breakfast on the stairs as I make my way to bed, so I am not sure where the extra hours would come from.
There is also a matter of writing style to be considered – the relatively free and easy prose which I use here and which is my “normal” writing style is not appropriate for a learned or academic work; self-publishing gives me the luxury of not having an editor peering over my shoulder, imposing deadlines, drawing attention to my omissions, and “correcting” my punctuation.
My niche is carefully chosen. I am not a journalist, so I do not generally have to work to somebody else’s timetable. I am not an analyst, so am spared the obligation to research and analyse primary material. The relevant case law involves practical things like breaches of what are, in truth, easily-understood rules rather than complex matters of contractual interpretation or tax statutes. I do not do system specifications, nor am I a user, so I do not purport to undertake the comparative analysis of one software application over another beyond a broad understanding of what each of them does. I am not a computer scientist or an expert in linguisitcs or statistics. My role is to pick out the essentials of all these things and try to dish them up in palatable form to a broad range of interest groups and skill levels, acting as a translator between people whose possibly deep skills in one area might exclude any knowledge of another.
I also have the significant advantage of belonging in a jurisdiction which does not make a religion out of the minutiae of eDiscovery procedure and the relevant technology. One of the reasons why English lawyers can be reasonably sure that the software they use, and the techniques which accompany it, are adequate for their obligations is that most of it has been through the fire of the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or the no less onerous requirements of US regulators. One of the consequences of the US burdens is an upward spiral of technological sophistication and related thinking, as technology first meets the challenges and then, because it exists, raises the bar set by courts and regulators and by those who make discovery demands of others. That spawns a high level of jurisprudential and scientifically-based thinking and writing, the existence of which gives comfort to the journeyman lawyer who may not understand it all but who is glad to know that somebody else does. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Chris Dale 
