The legal profession: Today, electronic discovery (e-discovery) software applications can analyze
documents in a fraction of the time that human lawyers would take, at a fraction of
the cost. For example, Blackstone Discovery (www.blackstonediscovery.com) helped one
company analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000. That company estimated
that the process would have cost $1.5 million if performed by lawyers.
E-discovery applications go beyond simply fi nding documents rapidly using relevant
terms. They can also extract relevant concepts, even in the absence of specifi c terms, and
they can deduce peoples’ patterns of behavior that would have eluded lawyers examining
millions of documents. These applications can also analyze documents for information
pertaining to the activities and interactions of people—who did what and when, and who
talked to whom.