This short course will cover uses of artificial intelligence in the law, particularly for disputes, litigation, and investigations. From the perspective of a judge, a legal technologist and a mathematician, you will learn when and how to apply AI techniques including analytics, predictive coding and technology assisted review (TAR) to control costs.

About this course

Document review is typically the most expensive component of any dispute or investigation, primarily due to the volume of documents in this world of big data. Utilising a leading eDiscovery technology platform, Nuix Discover, you will spend a significant part of the day learning in a hands-on lab how analytics and predictive coding can be applied to find relevant evidence and valuable facts more quickly and to reduce the number of documents for review. Class size will be limited to ensure individual support is available.

Seven CPD units (one unit per hour)

Course structure

9:00am Perspectives from both sides of the Bench
Speaker_: Hon. Peter Vickery QC, former judge in the Supreme Court of Victoria

Know your judge
Getting the judge onside
Discovery obligations
TAR overview – a judge’s perspective
Joint or unilateral verification.

10:00am Perspectives from both sides of the Bench
Speaker: Beth Patterson, Director, ESPconnect and Professional Fellow, UTS Law

eDiscovery market
Product landscape
AI value proposition
On-demand consumption of services, eDiscovery in the cloud.

10.45am Analytics and TAR explained
Speakers: Beth Patterson and Dr Paul Hunter

Overview.

11:00am Analytics
Speaker: Beth Patterson

Visualising data
Types of analytics
Use cases.

11:30am Predictive coding
Speaker: Dr Paul Hunter, Principal Research Scientist, Nuix

Overview
Unpacking predictive coding
Sampling to understand a collection
Recall as a measure of completeness
Prioritisation – predictive models, scores & ranking
Precision as a measure of efficiency
CAL workflow
Validation through sampling & defensible statistical statements
Case studies.

1:15pm Who do you need on the team?
Speakers: Hon. Peter Vickery QC and Beth Patterson

Multidisciplinary expertise
Team management
Collaboration.

1:30pm Buying eDiscovery services
Speakers: Hon. Peter Vickery QC and Beth Patterson

Cost management
Pricing models.

2:00 pm Lab session: hands-on learning
Speakers: Dr Paul Hunter

Predictive coding - prioritising a review.

3:45 pm Lab session: hands-on learning
Speakers: Beth Patterson and Dr Paul Hunter

Analytics - early case assessment: finding relevant facts.

Learning outcomes

Understand how analytics and TAR can be applied to document review
Plan to include AI in document management plans
Identify ways to control costs by deploying AI solutions.

Discounts

A discount of 10% is available to UTS Alumni or UTS Staff enrolling in this short course. If you’re eligible for this discount, please ensure you have provided your UTS Student or Staff ID number in your UTS Open Profile (under ‘A bit about you’).

When signing up for the Session, use the relevant voucher code to apply the discount to your Cart:

UTS Student / Alumni: Lawalumni
UTS Staff: Lstaff

Please note that there’s a limit of one discount rate per participant.

Who is this course for?

This course is targeted at lawyers, barristers, judges and arbitrators who want to learn how analytics and TAR can be applied and how they actually work in practice. It is particularly useful for:

litigation lawyers
litigation partners
government lawyers
Royal Commission and Inquiry staff
Court officers
digital forensic specialists
barristers
IT teams
corporate lawyers involved in complex litigation
class action lawyers, funders and insurers
regulatory agency staff.

Meet the Expert

Hon Peter Vickery QC

former judge in the Supreme Court of Victoria

The Honourable Peter Vickery QC has a LLB from the University of Melbourne and a LLM from Kings College, University of London. He undertook articles at Madden Butler Elder & Graham (now Norton Rose Fulbright) and was admitted to practice in Victoria in 1973. He commenced practice as a Barrister in 1978 and was appointed QC in 1995.

He was appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 2008 and retired in 2018, having established and managed the Technology, Engineering and Construction List. He is the inaugural Patron of the Society of Construction Law (Australia).

He has over 40 years’ experience in arbitration and litigation in complex construction and commercial cases. Upon retirement from the Supreme Court, he now works as an arbitrator, court-appointed referee, DRB panellist, mediator, ENE evaluator, and provides expert determinations, specialising in commercial; technology, engineering and construction; and intellectual property disputes.

In May 2019 he was appointed as a lecturer in Law and Technology at UTS. His focus as a judge in litigation, and in alternative dispute resolution, has been and is to produce a binding outcome in the most efficient manner possible, to minimise cost and delay.

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Beth Patterson

Director, ESPconnect and Professional Fellow

Beth is Director of ESPconnect and a Professional Fellow of UTS Faculty of Law. She is a globally-recognised leader in the development of legal technologies and is passionate about how artificial intelligence is enabling change in the practice of law and future of work. As a strategic consultant to businesses across the legal ecosystem, Beth has extensive experience developing strategy and unique insight into building multidisciplinary teams to address the challenges of digital disruption.

Prior to recently setting up her own legal tech and innovation consultancy business, she was Chief Legal and Technology Services Officer at Allens for 20 years, leading a large team of legal and technology professionals responsible for the firm’s alternative service offering and digital transformation strategy. Beth was instrumental in the strategy and implementation of analytics and predictive coding for litigation and investigation matters.

Beth is a member of Ethical AI Australia and the ISO TC-307 Blockchain Technical Committee Smart Contracts Working Group. She has received numerous awards for innovative work including the 2017 Lexis Nexis Janders Dean Innovation Special Achievement award for her work in advancing the legal industry, 2016 LawTech Legal IT Leader of the Year – Large Firm, and the 2015 ILTA Litigation Support Professional of the Year Distinguished Peer Award.

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Dr Paul Hunter

Principal Research Scientist, Nuix

Paul Hunter is Principal Research Scientist with Nuix Discover, based in Melbourne Australia but working closely with colleagues in the US and elsewhere. He is primarily responsible for the algorithms and mathematics behind Discover’s predictive coding solution, and regularly provides statistical advice regarding the use of TAR.

Dr Hunter has 20 years of software development experience, and has built a career on the application of mathematics to emerging business problems. Prior to joining FTI Consulting ten years ago, he developed software across a range of industries including strategic workforce planning, insurance price design, and logistics. Paul has made extensive contributions to Discover’s analytics platform, including document clustering, similarity searches, and predictive coding.

Paul holds a 1st class Honours degree and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Monash University.

Paul has played a key role in the application of predictive coding to numerous matters over the past five years and was heavily involved – either as a practitioner or an independent expert – in the earliest reported applications of predictive coding in the Australian courts.

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Please arrive at 8:30 am for registration. Morning tea will be provided for seminar participants. Disclaimer: While it is the Faculty's intention to provide this program as advertised, UTS reserves the right to alter the program, or to cancel this seminar should the minimum enrolment quota not be met. Please note that all registrations are governed by UTS Short Courses & Conferences’

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