Ediscoverylawreview.com first discussed this emerging issue in
its blog post on February 15, 2012. As anticipated, Magistrate
Judge Peck issued an opinion detailing his reasons for authorizing
the use of predictive coding in Da Silva Moore v. Publicis
Group, No. 11-CV-1279 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 25, 2012). Judge
Peck's position on predictive coding can be summarized by a
single statement in his Opinion: "What the Bar should take
away from this Opinion is that computer-assisted review is an
available tool and should be seriously considered for use in
large-data-volume cases where it may save the producing party (or
both parties) significant amounts of legal fees in document
review."
As Judge Peck noted, this Opinion appears to be the first
wherein the Court approved predictive coding. He emphasized that
while manual document reviews are still considered the "gold
standard," studies have shown that "computerized searches
are at least as accurate, if not more so, than manual
