By Caroline Sweeney

Electronic discovery has brought a magnitude of changes to the legal industry. In the past few years the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as well as many state rules were amended to address electronic discovery. A number of industry studies point to document review as the most significant line-item in litigation discovery costs and with the continuing proliferation of electronic data, corporate clients have demanded new ways to manage the ever-rising costs of discovery. As a result, law firms have been forced to respond to client concerns by using various technology tools, changing staffing models and implementing project management guidelines around the document review process.

In light of industry changes and the continuing proliferation of electronic data, corporate clients have started to demand new ways to manage the costs of discovery. A number of industry studies point to document review as the most significant line-item in litigation discovery costs. As a result, law firms have been forced to respond to client concerns by using various technology tools, changing staffing models and implementing project management guidelines around the document review process.

What Is Managed Document Review?
In the “old days,” paralegals and attorneys collected paper documents from clients and typically set up a review team — usually in a conference room — consisting of firm associates to review those documents for responsive/non-responsive, privilege and key. After a review of the complaint, answer and discovery requests, the review was underway. Separate stacks were created for each “review category” and eventually the responsive documents were copied or imaged and produced. After days, weeks or even months, the review team emerged from the conference room with the review complete. The time spent on the review was billed to the client at the associates’ standard billing rates — no (or few) questions asked.

As the volume of electronic data has increased — along with the costs for review of that data — the demand for litigation cost control measures has been made. In some instances, clients have even taken over the first pass review of documents. Law firms have responded by using contract attorneys with lower billing rates, though often applying some margin of mark-up to cover their supervision and overhead costs. Staffing agencies responded to corporate client concerns by marketing their services directly to them, circumventing the law firm, and having initial review costs billed directly to them. Law firms needed to look beyond their traditional model for undertaking document reviews to retain involvement in the document review process and respond to client needs. As a result, more and more firms are offering clients managed document review services, applying project management skills and protocols to the document review process.

Why Choose Managed Document Review?
With a managed document review service, law firms are able to offer a more efficient approach to document review — saving clients money, and retaining law firm involvement and expertise benefiting both parties.

Managed document review how-to:

• Define scope and timeline — The first step in any project is to define the scope and associated timeline. From there, budget and staffing needs can be determined. This requires communication between the document review manager, litigation support personnel, technology vendor and legal team to understand the volume of documents anticipated for review. It is important to understand other specifics about the matter in defining the project scope including the type of case, the kind of documents included in the review, the number of custodians, the complexity of issues and potential for privilege information, production deadlines and format, the extent that targeted collection and varied data culling techniques will be used to limit the scope of review, and the technology platform to be employed. The scope and timeline can always be refined, but starting with a series of assumptions allows for development of a solid project scope definition.
• Define budget and staffing needs — Once the project parameters have been scoped, the review budget should be prepared. Typically, the budget includes electronic data processing costs, estimated document review rate and, consequently, number of review team hours required to meet the deadline. Also included is the estimated responsive rate and costs for production from the review platform. It is good to consider staffing requirements that may make the review more efficient and cost-effective when developing the budget. For example, consider staffing your document review with review analysts that have experience with the review platform, the type of case and even the client’s documents from past reviews. Once the budget is developed it should be regularly monitored; changes in assumptions should be reflected in a modified budget and communicated to the legal team.
• Training — The need to have a formal training program is often overlooked. Dedicating a day, or most of a day, to the training process can reap great benefits in the overall consistency, quality and efficiencies of the review effort. A typical training agenda includes a case background summary including review of the complaint and answer, a review of the specific document requests that would qualify for a responsive/relevant call, review of the key players in the litigation, a review of potentially privileged terms/names, overview of the review categories, and overview of the review platform and workflow. All this information should be documented and provided to the review team members in a notebook for ongoing reference. Further, a training session should include document review examples to analyze. It is imperative that the legal team members participate in the training session; regular status reviews between the document review team, quality control team and legal team ensures on-going quality and consistency in the review.
• Quality control and feedback — Formal quality control processes are not the norm in the law firm review environment. In fact, it is not unusual to assume that quality control is not necessary, because “law firms know how to do review.” It is essential to begin quality control as soon as a document reviewer completes their first review assignment. A written feedback form to provide to the review team member is useful. Start with a QC level of 100 percent, verifying every document in the reviewers’ initial assignments and gradually scale back to random spot-checks. In addition to attorney verification of the document review assignments, the document review manager can conduct analysis of reviewer calls. For example, analyze the percentage of responsive, non-responsive or privilege calls made by each review team member. If percentages seem high or low, investigate why and provide any necessary clarification to the reviewer. If using keywords before uploading data to the review platform, also consider creating a couple of random sample batches of no-hit documents to verify the validity of your keyword search terms. Don’t be afraid to remove document review staff (assuming contract attorneys are being used) who are not acclimating. It is also important to stay on top of the quality control team to ensure they give timely feedback to document reviewers, ensuring accuracy and consistency. Waiting too long to identify problems with a review team member’s work product results in increased costs and unnecessary re-work. The project manager needs to be the task master.
• Productivity monitoring — Daily monitoring of review rates is essential to keep the review project on schedule. Variances between the estimated and actual review rate allows you to determine whether the review will conclude sooner or if additional staff is needed. In addition, this information can be used as part of the quality control effort; those with very high or very low review rates warrant a QC check. Though not always popular, communicating review rates to the team can be motivating and result in improved review rates — and all team members remain informed about the status of the project. Changes in average rates or staffing requirements should be communicated in the daily productivity report.
• Reporting — Status, budget, completion — it is the review project manager’s responsibility to report regularly on project status and adherence to project budget estimates. Regular reporting ensures no surprises for the legal team or client. Discuss changes to review project assumptions in the context of the impact on overall budget and timeline. Variances in the budget should be explained in the monthly budget report.
• Ongoing gathering of statistics — Finally, is it important to not only track statistics for each review project, but also to maintain this information across review projects. These metrics will allow you to prepare more accurate project budgets and manage expectations of legal teams and clients.

The application of project management skills and techniques to the document review process results in efficiencies that benefit both law firm and client. The procedures described above reduce costs and enhance the quality of the review. Consider how law firm litigation support staff, paralegals or even dedicated project management staff can help you realize these benefits.

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