Always an observant lot, a number of federal defenders emailed me the link to a March 4, 2011 NY Times article which discusses how e-discovery software is saving attorney time and charges. See Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software. Comparing the traditional method of document review where attorneys and paralegals do “eyes on paper,” the article discusses e-discovery software that can analyze documents more quickly and for less money – music to everyone’s ears, especially those who do indigent criminal defense work.

The article describes how some of these software analytics can more effectively search and retrieve information than ever before, even if a human being viewed and indexed every document. Examples include “conceptual searching” software which, broadly stated, can find the ideas in which you are interested, even if the specific keywords are not contained in the document. So, for example, if you are looking for the concept of “bill of law,” the program identifies relevant documents (documents that reference bill of laws, constitutional amendments, etc.) and excludes other documents which may have the word “bill” in them but do not include the concept of “bill” that you are interested in (such as duck bill).