The inference validity problem in legal discovery

This paper introduces the inference validity problem, a software-engineering concern that manifests in and complicates the pre-trial process of discovery in litigation. The problem is related to the requirements validation problem in traditional software engineering, but with stricter constraints on stakeholder communication and potentially severe liability risks on the part of software engineers who are retained as expert witnesses. We propose an approach, based on the use of formal methods and traceability, to enable software engineers to avoid this problem, thereby increasing the quality of written opinions while mitigating the risk of liability.