A new tool that provides ediscovery legal teams with a more defensible and reliable method for developing the keywords needed to find responsive documents has been announced by RenewData.

Anagram Keyword Development is a service that expedites and removes the risk from the keyword selection process associated with legal or regulatory matters.

"The Anagram methodology is a unique process that solves a real market problem," said Steven Horan, Chief Executive Officer of RenewData.

"Everyone in eDiscovery knows there is a real need for a defendable, cost effective method for developing keywords. The current process has come under a tremendous amount of criticism because it is inaccurate and often results in contentious negotiations between legal teams. Anagram Keyword Development is the first simple, transparent and defensible methodology for selecting keywords that will transform how organisations prepare for eDiscovery and investigations."

The time required to review large amounts of documents retrieved from an organisation can be cumbersome and costly. Keyword search remains the most widely used content-centric approach for reducing the amount of data for review.

However, most keyword selection methods are ad hoc, extremely inefficient and have no clear process. Traditional keyword selection methods can produce lists that are either too broad or too narrow, meaning valuable time is wasted manually reviewing irrelevant content or critical documents are missed altogether.

In today's litigation environment, the process used for selecting keywords must be documented and defensible. Disjointed selection processes can result in costly sanctions, adverse inferences or other unfavourable rulings.

For example, in the US case William A. Gross Constr. Assocs. v. Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co. both parties failed to cooperate on the creation of the keywords to search an e-mail database. Based on the major dispute over search terms, the judge offered an unfavourable opinion which set a new standard for the use of keywords in eDiscovery.

He stated that there needs to be "careful thought, quality control, testing, and cooperation with opposing counsel in designing search terms or 'keywords' to be used to produce emails or other electronically stored information."

"We continue to believe eDiscovery technology should empower keen legal insight, not replace it," says Horan. "Anagram achieves this. The elegance of Anagram is its ability to leverage human knowledge and language in a way that makes the eDiscovery process so much more efficient.

“Using the Anagram method, a legal professional can develop the keywords and phrases for a case issue in a fraction of time the current methods take. The accuracy, cost savings and time efficiencies Anagram delivers will make it an industry standard as a method for developing keywords in the future."

Anagram deploys a patent-pending method for extracting, analysing and displaying the entire vocabulary of the document collection, in a manner which makes synonym expansion fast and accurate.

The process allows lawyers to move directly from the concepts they are seeking within the collection of documents to the formation of key phrases that will identify documents containing those concepts. Anagram's capabilities can benefit clients beyond eDiscovery as well, including content management, scientific research and regulatory compliance.

Anagram is currently integrated into RenewData's service platform but future versions of this methodology will be available as a product in the near future, allowing clients to take even more of the eDiscovery process in house. In addition, by delivering Anagram as a software offering, RenewData partners will be able to integrate the solution into their client engagements as well.