The Limitations of Keywords

Director, Review Services and Counsel

February 5, 2019

A high-profile case making headlines again this week illustrates the frailties of relying on keyword searching alone when searching for relevant documents in any document review project.

Vice-Admiral Mark Norman was charged last year with breach of trust for allegedly leaking government secrets, and his legal team sought a court direction to obtain thousands of previously undisclosed government documents needed to defend him.

According to an article published by the Globe and Mail, Norman’s lawyers presented the court with evidence that his case was referred to by officials within the Department of National Defence using various codenames. … Read More

O’Donnell Speaks at CBA Alberta Civil Litigation Section Meeting

Crystal O’Donnell, Heuristica’s CEO and Senior Counsel, was pleased to speak at the CBA Alberta Civil Litigation Section (South) meeting in Calgary on December 12th, 2018.

Crystal joined Adrienne Wong, Associate, and Jordan Milne, Partner, both of Rose LLP and Deanna Steblyk, Senior Special Counsel to the Vice Chairs of the Alberta Securities Commission, and presented “Disclosure Obligations and their Implications in Securities Enforcement Context” from the perspective of regulators, respondents and third party discovery and evidence management firms.

For more information including how to obtain a copy of their presentation please visit the CBA Alberta Branch web site.… Read More

Candice Chan-Glasgow Elected Vice-Chair of E-Discovery Implementation Committee

We congratulate Candice on being elected Vice-Chair of the Ontario e-Discovery Implementation Committee (EIC) for 2019. Candice served as secretary in 2018.

Candice is Heuristica’s Director of Legal Review Services and Counsel and leads our team of document review counsel.

The Ontario E-Discovery Implementation Committee (EIC) is a committee of lawyers, judges, and legal technologists with a mandate of recommending, promoting, and implementing thought leadership, best practices, and law reform with respect to information management, discovery, litigation support, and paperless proceedings.

For more information about the EIC please visit their web site here.

O’Donnell speaks at Ontario e-Discovery Institute

Crystal O’Donnell, Heuristica’s Chief Executive Officer and Senior Counsel, spoke at the e-Discovery Institute 2018 at The Advocates’ Society Education Centre in downtown Toronto earlier this week.

Now in its 8th year, this highly anticipated full day program provides attendees with the practical information and insights they need to effectively manage electronically stored information in all types of cases. Attendees:

Heard from the experts about how to efficiently manage all phases of the e-Discovery process, managing electronic data from discovery through to trial.
Attended demonstrations of the latest e-Discovery technology.
Learned how to help their clients protect against and respond to cyber hacks.

No Matter is Too Small – the Case for Email Threading

Wendy Cole

Director, Project Management and Counsel

November 5, 2018

Consider for a moment the last time you had to review email messages for discovery, or pay counsel to do so on your behalf. The endless toil of slogging through random fragments of email threads that appear to be in no particular order. After a while it starts to feel like a terrible case of déjà vu. Haven’t I seen this email before? Why am I looking at this again and how did I code it when I saw it an hour ago? Did this part of the thread come before or after the portion that I viewed yesterday? … Read More