If $G$ is a group, by a presentation of a group $G$, I mean a representation of $G$ by generators and relations.
If we have that the bound on a presentation length is $O({\left( {\log \;\left| G \right|} \right)^2})$ [Babai et al.], and you have a presentation of length e.g. 136 and the order of your group is e.g. 20160, how do you know whether or not your length 136 is within the bound of $O({\left( {\log \;20160} \right)^2})$? My problem might be understanding the asymptotic notation, as I am not that familiar with it.
Saying that the length is $O((\log |G|)^2)$ means that there is an unknown constant $K$ such that the length is at most $K(\log |G|)^2$. Since we don't know what $K$ is, and the author of the author of the paper probably does not care, you cannot possibly judge the correctness of the assertion from a single group $G$.
The information from a group $G$ only enables you to find a lower bound for the constant, so you would need a range of examples of different sizes $|G|$ in order to make a sensible assessment of $K$ and whether the bound is correct.