Podcast on the In re Biomet decision

A couple of weeks ago, I discussed here the dubious mathematics underlying the court's approval of pre-predictive coding keyword searches in In re Biomet.  This morning I discussed the case with other e-discovery professionals on an ESI Bytes podcast.

Federal court approves pre-predictive coding keyword filtration based on faulty math in In re Biomet

A district court’s recent approval of keyword filtration prior to the use of predictive coding in In re Biomet, No. 3:12-MD-2391 (N.D. Ind. April 18, 2013) rests on bad math and could deprive the requesting party of over 80% of the relevant documents. Specifically, the court ruled that a defendant’s use of predictive coding on a keyword-culled dataset met its discovery obligations because only a “modest” number of documents would be excluded. But a proper analysis of the statistical sampling on which the court relied shows that defendant’s keyword filtration would deprive plaintiffs of a substantial proportion of the relevant documents. The error in the court’s finding regarding the completeness of defendant’s production underpinned and undermines its additional holding that to require the defendant to employ predictive coding on the full dataset would offend Rule 26(b)(2)(C) proportionality. Accordingly, the early chorus of praise which has greeted the decision is unwarranted.