algorithms and human brainpower to
screen documents. It promises to find
relevant legal documents faster and
cheaper than people alone can do. Peck
has put his support behind this new
technology with his trademark out
spokenness.
Peck threw down the gauntlet in
his February 2012 decision in Da Silva
Moore v. Publicis Groupe & MSL Group
and 2009’s William A. Gross Construction
Associates v. Manufacturers Mutual Insur-
ance Co. In the latter case, he issued his
famous “wakeup call” in response to a
discovery process that was bogged down
by disagreement over search terms:
“This opinion should serve as a wake
up call to the bar in this district about
the need for careful thought, quality
control, testing, and cooperation with
opposing counsel in designing search
terms or ‘keywords’ to be used to pro
duce emails or other electronically
stored information.”
In Da Silva, he expounded on that
statement: “This judicial opinion now
recognizes that computerassisted re
view is an acceptable way to search for
relevant [electronically stored informa
tion] in appropriate cases.”
Peck believes that predictive coding
and the future iterations of this technol
ogy are an inevitable resource for cost
conscious lawyers, clients, and judges who
want to keep cases moving in their court
rooms. It’s time for the slowtoadapt
legal infrastructure to sign on, he says:
“Producing parties want to do five key
words, and receiving parties want to do
500. It’s like the legal version of Go Fish.”
Austinbased lawyer and computer
forensic examiner Craig Ball calls Peck
“an able advocate of embracing new
technology to bring down the cost and
boost the quality of largescale docu
ment review.”
PAUL GRIMM
JUDGE, U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR
THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND
GRIMM EXPLAINS THE CONCEPT of pro
portionality this way: “A $100,000 case
shouldn’t cost a half a million.” That
philosophy has made him the leading ju
dicial advocate for transparency and cost
control in ediscovery.
A former U.S. Army officer, judge
advocate general, and federal magistrate
from 1997 to 2012 until elevated to his
current post, Grimm has watched the
cost and workload of ediscovery rise
with the use of the Internet. Until tech
nology fully catches up to the problem,
Grimm thinks radical human solutions
are required. “We can’t have a procedur
ally advanced system that no one can af
ford to use,” he says. Lawyers, Grimm
adds, need to find a way to collaborate
on search even though their clients op
pose each other: “Effective advocacy
means lawyers have to come up with a
discovery plan that makes sense.”
The need to work together was
Grimm’s message in 2008’s Mancia v.
Mayflower Textile Services Co. That ruling
contained a detailed examination of rule
26(g) of the Federal Rules of Civil Pro
cedure, which covers ediscovery duty
to disclose requirements, and other law
calling for cooperation among parties in
discovery. It mirrored the views of the
Sedona Conference Cooperation Proc
lamation, a proposal for judicial reform
by a legal industry think tank.
Jason R. Baron, director of litiga
tion for the National Archives, credits
Grimm’s Mancia opinion for its “laud
able emphasis on having parties speak
IN HIS DECISIONS, ANDREW PECK HAS
STRESSED THE NEED FOR GREATER
ACCEPTANCE OF PREDICTIVE CODING.
