James Cameron’s third in the trilogy of Terminator movies tells of the rise to pre-eminence of the machine over man. Likewise Moore v. Publicis Groupe, a US case that came out on February 24 2012, could mark the beginning of the end for the hard slog (and massive lawyer's fees) for disclosure (discovery), for it endorses (in suitable circumstances) the use of “black box” technology to “assist” the lawyers in that review.
We will have to wait to see how it is received in this country but I attended the major IQPC Conference last week where Master Whitaker (one of the gurus of e-disclosure) described the use of such assistance as “pragmatic and proportional” and “at least as accurate as human review”. Watch out boys Arnie is on his way.