When Are Keyword Search Terms Risky Business?
Gregory L Fordham January 2009 The use of computerized keyword search terms has become widespread as litigators sift through large volumes of data in today’s e-discovery cases. Although keyword searches are powerful, there is growing recognition of their “process” risks and “capability” limitations. The process risks include things such as inadequate sampling and testing of the search terms to determine their suitability as predictors of responsive documents. They can also include the user’s unfamiliarity with the search engine and whether it is suitable for searching the kinds of electronic documents that are of interest. Both of these kinds of issues can result in either an excessive volume of false positives that waste resources and squander budget or, even worse, result in instances of false negatives, where significant documents are not identified at all. Some recent cases where these kinds of problems were encountered include U.S. v O’Keefe, 537 F. Supp. 2d 14, D.D.C. (2008); Vic
