Although federal prosecutors in the United States had originally objected to the appointment of an independent person to review materials the FBI seized from Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, they officially withdrew their opposition.
Instead, prosecutors recommended that retired Magistrate Judge Frank Maas and David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science Research Professor Maura Grossman conduct the initial review using technology-assisted review.
Grossman and her colleague computer science Professor Gordon Cormack, experts in legal search technologies, have demonstrated that technology-assisted review of documents can yield results superior to that of exhaustive manual review.*
“This is unquestionably a high-profile legal matter,” said Mark Giesbrecht, Director of the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. “Given Maura’s well-established and widely recognized expertise in legal search technologies, it’s not surprising she was recommended for this high-stakes, time-sensitive task.”
In addition to being a research professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, Grossman is principal of Maura Grossman Law, an eDiscovery law and consulting firm based in New York, NY. Before joining the University of Waterloo, she was of counsel at the prominent New York law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
* See Maura R. Grossman & Gordon V. Cormack, Technology-Assisted Review in E-Discovery Can Be More Effective and More Efficient than Exhaustive Manual Review, Richmond Journal of Law and Technology, 2011. 17(3): 1–48. Available at http://jolt.richmond.edu/jolt-archive/v17i3/article11.pdf
