Research Professor Maura Grossman has been named second of five Global Elite Thought Leaders in Litigation in Canada by Who’s Who Legal 2020.
The Thought Leaders in Litigation category aims to bring together the insight, expertise and wisdom of the world’s foremost lawyers and experts. Individuals in this category merit special mention not only because of their expertise and experience advising on some of the world’s most significant and cutting-edge matters, but also their ability to innovate and inspire.
This prestigious acknowledgement comes after Who’s Who Legal’s earlier recognition of Research Professor Grossman as a National and as a Global eDiscovery Leader.
Research Professor Grossman with her colleague Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Gordon Cormack pioneered the use of technology-assisted review for eDiscovery — applying supervised machine learning to the task of expediting review of legal documents. Their work has been put to the test in a number of high-stakes matters, among them the task of processing the 1.5 million emails transferred to the Library of Virginia in 2010 as part of the electronic records of outgoing Governor Tim Kaine and, since then, classifying the electronic records of former Virginia Governors Warner and McDonnell.
More recently, Professors Grossman and Cormack applied their technology-assisted review methodology to a new area — the automation of literature searches in medical and healthcare databases to prepare systematic reviews to find effective treatments to mitigate COVID-19.
The sheer volume of studies on COVID-19, along with studies on previous epidemics and pandemics, simply cannot be gathered and assessed quickly enough using traditional manual methods. To guide decisions by healthcare providers on the frontlines of care, Professors Grossman and Cormack collaborated with the knowledge synthesis team at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto to automate literature searches, an essential step in preparing comprehensive systematic reviews. By expediting literature searches, these critically important systematic reviews were prepared in a matter of days, rather than the weeks or even months required when literature searches are conducted manually.
In addition to being a faculty member at the Cheriton School of Computer Science, Research Professor Grossman is an Adjunct Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, an affiliate faculty member of the Vector Institute, and principal of Maura Grossman Law, an eDiscovery law and consulting firm based in Buffalo, New York. Before joining the University of Waterloo, Research Professor Grossman was of counsel at the prominent Manhattan law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. She also served as the Director of Women in Computer Science from 2019 to 2020, and is currently a Wes Graham Faculty Research Fellow.