Over the past 5 years various methodologies have been developed around TAR and Predictive Coding that have had success in some areas and failures in others. My intent is to develop a consensus on a Reference Model that not only provides guidance for legal and technology professionals, but also provides a conduit for firms to develop defensible arguments for their methodologies.

The latter cause has it’s pros and cons naturally. On one end you have the consensus of an industry with meticulous analysis of techniques utilized by a variety of legal professionals, scholars and legal support vendors. On the other end if you get set in your ways and not continuously update what is perceived as acceptable, then relying on the technology may be like driving off a cliff. So its important to take note and rely on these methodologies to assist in furthering your cause, rather than making it an end all be all!

As it turns out and to our surprise this methodology can also be utilized in other industries like financial, medical, insurance and risk mitigation amongst others.

Since I saw my first case utilizing TAR and started developing mechanisms to help achieve the goal of assisting our clients, we here at iQwest have continually improved the process to this day. I developed this flow chart in 2009 with updates over the ensuing years to further our cause, but the time has come for us to put it out in the open to help develop a consensus and hopefully further the cause of others tackling this challenge.

Any comments and suggestions would be appreciated and if adopted we will have footnotes added later to credit your efforts.