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ARMIES OF EXPENSIVE LAWYERS, REPLACED BY CHEAPER SOFTWARE On March 4th, The New York Times reported that lawyers might want to start watching their backs because new e-discovery software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. Moreover, some of the more advanced programs go beyond just finding documents with relevant terms at computer speeds. They can extract relevant concepts and deduce patterns of behavior that would have eluded lawyers examining millions of documents Generally speaking, e-discovery technologies fall into two broad categories - linguistic and sociological. Basic linguistic software uses specific search words to find and sort relevant documents while more advanced programs filter documents through a large web of word and phrase definitions. Sociological programs, on the other hand, add an additional inferential layer of analysis - think the deductive powers of a human Sherlock Holmes. For instance, one of the newer types of sociological software is able to mine documents for the activities and interactions of people, focusing on who did what when, and who talked to whom. The software visualizes these chains of events and identifies discussions that might have taken place across e-mail, instant messages and telephone calls. Then, the software captures "digital anomalies" that white-collar criminals often create in trying to hide their activities. For example, it finds "call me" moments - those incidents when an employee decides to hide a particular action by having a private conversation. This usually involves switching media, perhaps from an e-mail conversation to instant messaging, telephone or even a face-to-face encounter. The software is also able to recognize the sentiment in an e-mail message - whether a person is positive or negative, or what the company calls "loud talking" - unusual emphasis that might give hints that a document is about a stressful situation. Finally, the software can also detect subtle changes in the style of an e-mail communication. Here, a shift in an author's e-mail style, from breezy to unusually formal, can raise a red flag about illegal activity. Undoubtedly, the employment impact of these new technologies will result in fewer lawyers. Mike Lynch, the founder of Autonomy, estimated that the shift from manual to automated document discovery would lead to a manpower reduction in which one lawyer would suffice for work that once required 500 and that the newest generation of software, which can detect duplicates and find clusters of important documents on a particular topic, could cut the head count by another 50 percent. A copy of the story may be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/science/05legal.html BYTES IN BRIEF: APRIL 2011 http://www.senseient.com/publications/bytes/html/april_2011.html http://www.senseient.com/images/redbutton.gif
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