Everyone knows that lawyers like words. The legal vernacular sets the industry apart from other sectors and instills exactness in the language of law to consistently apply it to cases as they arise. It can confuse, however, when lawyers apply their love of language to technology, such as predictive coding, predictive ranking and computer or technology-assisted review.

Predictive coding started out simple enough. For document reviewers, it was easy to foresee predictive coding. We all found a document or a group of documents highly relevant to litigation or not, and looked for an easy method to find more documents like the one in hand and code them together. E-discovery vendors gave the legal industry an “easy button,” enabling the bulk coding of documents—and later automated the process with predictive coding.

Predictive coding as an automated review process using human expertise.