Best Practices in the Document Review Process – Part II
To continue on from the Best Practices in the Document Review Process – Part I, we outline the methods for executing the work product of the document review by efficiently utilizing document review staff and producing quality results to support discovery.
Retaining experienced and competent staff
Every document review involves the repeated exercise of judgment by individual document reviewers about whether a given document contains information/data that satisfies variations established, defined, and communicated regarding criteria such as relevance, issue responsiveness, privilege, work product, and confidentiality. Moreover, managing attorneys must effectively verify and oversee the decisions being made by document reviewers to ensure accuracy and quality control. Thus, a mandatory document review best practice is having a document review team that contains exceptionally competent quality-managing attorneys and document reviewers who can properly identify what is responsive to various discovery requests, what documents contain attorney-client privileged, work-product or confidential information, etc., using either internal or external legal support.
Training
Training is also an essential document review best practice. The document review team must have dedicated training relevant to the general issues in the case, to the discovery-specific issues presented, and to client preferences and expectations. Training should also be ongoing, should be supplemented with written guidelines and a document review manual, and should be coupled with feedback from in-process oversight and quality-control sampling.
Making “task-specific” assignments to particularly experienced staff
Another document review best practice is assigning specific and dedicated tasks to staff that may have particular or deep experience. This protocol is also very useful if the case contains complex technical or medical issues. Thus, for example, where background and experience are appropriate, time efficiencies can be created and accuracy enhanced by assigning to one or two team members the task of reviewing medical records or patent-related documents. A similar protocol can be used with legally complex matters like the task of locating and “tagging” documents that contain attorney-client privilege or attorney work product.
Engaging in continuous, in-process, and effective quality control
Another crucial document review best practice involves quality control protocols that are continuous, in-process, targeted, and effective. Among other specifics, this involves:
- Supervising individual document reviewers for accuracy
- Ongoing “sampling” of documents processed
- Encouraging questions from document reviewers
- Continuing engagement with relevant records custodians and information technology personnel
- Surveying trends and recurring practical problems like e-format documents failing to open or load
- Addressing questions and correcting issues with respect to how coding is applied
- Identifying and establishing “needs-further-review” procedures
- Engaging the second-level review early in the document review process
- Consulting, as appropriate, with lead litigation attorneys
Issuing the production
Of course, the final step is actually issuing the documents to be produced, accurately labeled to correspond to the document request categories, properly numbered and marked as required along with a privilege log, and in the format designated. Another best practice is to implement streamlining mechanisms that anticipate a potential need for a secondary or supplemental document review/production based on additional discovery requests received.
For more information on document review and other litigation support services, contact Baer Reed, online or call us today at 888-433-1990.
- On March 4, 2022
- Back to post list