The Sedona Conference^® (TSC) and its Working Group 1 on Electronic Document Retention and Production (WG1) announced last Friday that The Sedona Conference TAR Case Law Primer, Second Edition has been published for public comment.

The first edition of the TAR Case Law Primer was published in January 2017 to address case law issues that arose during the early use of technology-assisted review (TAR) for the exploration and classification of large document collections in civil litigation. Since publication of the first edition, case law has addressed more complex issues such as TAR methodologies, metrics, and validation.

This second edition reflects the subsequent history and development of TAR case law, analyzes the published judicial decisions in the years following the original publication, and discusses how the technological shift from TAR 1.0 systems to TAR 2.0, continuous active learning, has impacted the case law. Like the first edition, the Primer does not recommend best practices or otherwise comment on the utility of TAR. It is intended to assist courts and practitioners in staying abreast of this evolving area of law and technology.

The 64-page Primer (available here for free download) discusses a whopping (by my count) 70 cases related to TAR! It discusses cases where courts declined to order TAR, where they ordered it, where they suggested it, challenges to responding party TAR methodology, transparency and disclosure of the use of TAR, cases allowing and not allowing the use of TAR after keyword culling, deference to ESI protocols, proportionality and fee shifting considerations, international adoption of TAR, the use of TAR in Federal government investigations and a table of all the cases in the Primer.

The Sedona Conference TAR Case Law Primer, Second Edition is open for public comment through March 27, 2023. Questions and comments may be sent to comments@sedonaconference.org. The drafting team will carefully consider all comments received, and determine what edits are appropriate for the final version.

Also, keep an eye out for the announcement of an upcoming Sedona Conference webinar on the Primer, to be held in mid-March. Members of the drafting team will provide key takeaways from the Primer and solicit feedback and questions.

Hat tip to Judge Peck for giving me the heads up on the Primer release. 🙂

So, what do you think? Are you using TAR regularly in your cases? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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