[helterskelter]

This is the nature of any non-trivial litigation. It can take a long time just to source all the records of what's being argued over, then it takes a long time to argue over what's allowed, then a long time to argue what all of it means, then a long time to argue over which laws, jurisdictions and precedents apply, then a long time to figure out when the judge (who is juggling >1000 cases) can fit you in, then your legal counsel is on vacation, then the complaint gets amended and you have to reevaluate everything you've been fighting over for the past half decade, repeating much of the above, then opposition replaces their counsel (that's a 60 day pause), then the judge dies from old age, and then finally everybody forgets about it because space has expanded so much since you started the case that nobody can communicate anymore and the universe is going into heat death.

Kafka was trained as an attorney, after all.

[lesuorac]

> It can take a long time just to source all the records of what's being argued over,

It seems to me that if you can't timely procure your own records in a court case the case should be allowed to proceed with any assumptions based on them in your opponent's favor. Whats really the difference between taking 2+ years to procure a document and deleting that document?

[helterskelter]

Oftentimes the records aren't in the hands of either party and need to be subpoenaed. When you get them, they can open up entirely new lines of inquiry. Opposition will fight this tooth and nail so that the evidence can't be included, or they'll go on a fishing expedition under the guise of having all the facts on the table, and the court might just allow them. This process can take a very long time, and from what I've seen, the higher the stakes, the more the court will be willing to allow it to happen, so nobody can cry to the appeals court that something important was left out. Judges don't like their rulings overturned.

[AnthonyMouse]

It's typically not a matter of having the documents, it's a matter of filtering them.

Suppose you have a corporate mail server with all your mail on it, and a competitor sues you. Your emails are going to be full of trade secrets, prices negotiated with suppliers, etc. Things that are irrelevant to the litigation and can't be given to the competitor. Meanwhile there are other emails they're entitled to see because they're directly relevant to the litigation.

What option do you have other than to have someone go read ten years worth of emails to decide which ones they get?

> Whats really the difference between taking 2+ years to procure a document and deleting that document?

The difference is obviously that they get the document in the 2nd+ year of the trial instead of never.

[johnnyanmac]

>What option do you have other than to have someone go read ten years worth of emails to decide which ones they get?

This funnily enough sounds like the exact use case of AI in streamlining timely, tedious, but important matters. Now the that someone simply needs to verify that the filtered documents are relevsnt.

Of course, I'm assuming a world where AI works on this scale. Or a world where this slow walking discovery isn't a feature for corporations.

> The difference is obviously that they get the document in the 2nd+ year of the trial instead of never.

Yeah, after using that year to make billions of dollars. That's how the current AI litigation is going. Once again by design. Pillage until the cows come home in 5-6 years.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Now the that someone simply needs to verify that the filtered documents are relevsnt.

Now someone simply needs to verify that the filtered in documents are relevant and the filtered out documents are not relevant. But wait, that was the original problem.

[johnnyanmac]

If they are trusting AI to replace labor, they should trust AI to be accountable for bad filters. What happens when a human misses over a document or 2?

[AnthonyMouse]

> If they are trusting AI to replace labor, they should trust AI to be accountable for bad filters.

Surely all of the AI hype is true and there are no hypocrites in Corporate America.

> What happens when a human misses over a document or 2?

If they were obligated to produce it and don't they can get into some pretty bad trouble with the court. If they hand over something sensitive they weren't required to, they could potentially lose billions of dollars by handing trade secrets to a competitor, or get sued by someone else for violating an NDA etc.

[mlhpdx]

As someone who has built an e-discovery platform I can tell you that any delays these days are because they are helpful to minimize negative employer cash flow. In other words, exactly why corporate lawyers are paid.

The technology for legal review is extremely fast and effective.