The heavy reliance on keyword search in e-discovery places an enormous burden on today’s legal teams. Inconsistencies in language, inefficiencies in search techniques and software user interfaces, which conceal more than reveal, place the attorney in a difficult position: determining what is relevant in a compressed timeline using obsolete tools and tactics. These outdated tools are a key factor behind the spiraling costs and risks associated with e-discovery.

These facts have not gone unnoticed by the legal community. The Sedona Conference has published several white papers which contain practical recommendations for dealing with these challenges and several key opinions have been written by the bench on these topics. In this paper – first in a three part series - we will examine the difficulties of working with keywords during a matter, the many challenges associated with relying on keyword search, and the cost and risk associated with attempting to “guess” one’s way to a relevant document set.

In the second and third part of this series we will discuss how intelligent combinations of visual analytics and concept clustering can help legal teams mitigate inherent risks of keyword search strategies and, in fact, restore keyword search to a more proper place within the e-discovery process.