Things recently took a dramatic turn in what's possibly the highest-profile litigation related to the world of e-discovery and technology-assisted review at the moment. On April 13, the plaintiffs in Monique Da Silva Moore, et al. v. Publicis Groupe & MSL Group filed a formal motion to recuse or disqualify Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck of the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.

Judge Peck had issued an opinion on Feb. 24 stating that the defendants could use predictive coding, a software tool that uses algorithms to automatically tag documents, to review as many as 3 million electronic documents as part of the parties' e-discovery protocol. As a result, the case became a flag for many in the legal technology space to wave as evidence of judicial approval for predictive coding, despite the fact that both parties had previously agreed upon its use.

However, after Judge Peck issued his opinion, the plaintiffs voiced their objection, citing a lack of criteria to fully gauge whether the results with predictive coding—in the precision and recall of relevant documents—was sufficient to justify its continued use. Then, after an initial letter from the plaintiffs on March 28 requesting that Judge Peck recuse himself, they filed the formal request a few weeks later.