BLP secures victory in first contested use of predictive coding in court

The High Court has made a landmark ruling on the UK’s first contested use of predictive coding in a litigation disclosure exercise.

Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) secured a victory for its client, BCA Trading, on Tuesday (17 May) in the form of an order to use predictive coding technology as part of a substantial document review.

The ruling marks the first time such an order has been granted.

BLP is defending BCA in the unfair prejudice action, brought by Candey client David Brown.

BLP’s team on the case is being led by litigation and corporate risk partner Oliver Glynn-Jones. The team also includes senior associate Robin Ganguly, associate Rebecca Wardle and trainee Alasdair McAlpine. Glynn-Jones has instructed One Essex Court’s Sa’ad Hossain QC.

Candey partner Andrew Dunn has instructed 4 Stone Buildings’ John Brisby QC and Alex Cook on the claim. Candey solicitor-advocate Tim Wright handled the advocacy in Tuesday’s hearing.

Glynn-Jones said that BLP was one of only a few firms with its own in-house data processing, hosting and document review capability, and was “almost unique” in having an in-house predictive coding resource.

“This latest court order is a significant win for our team, and an excellent demonstration of the opportunity provided by this technology,” added Glynn-Jones.

Predictive coding, or machine learning technology, has the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of the e-disclosure process. It has been gaining wider acceptance in the UK recently although it has been used for several years in the US.

The first formal judicial endorsement of the use of predictive coding came earlier this year in the Pyrrho Investments Ltd v MWB Property Ltd case. In that case Master Matthews, the co-author of the leading text on the subject of disclosure, granted approval for its use for the first time in English High Court proceedings.

In predictive coding a senior lawyer reviews a small “seed set” of documents, which is then analysed by the technology and used to generate a further sample for review.

BLP says that via a process of iterative refinement the algorithm can reach a level of review accuracy that can be applied across the entire dataset, identifying relevant documents in a manner that is more efficient and scalable than a traditional document review.

The technology will not only reduce the cost of e-disclosure, it also opens up new opportunities such as early case assessment, since it enables lawyers to quickly identify the most highly relevant documents at a much earlier stage than through a traditional review.