eDiscovery Daily Blog
eDiscovery Project Management: Train the Team — Preparation
As critical as procedures are, they aren’t enough. People need to be trained in applying those procedures. Training the staff will get your project off to a good start.
Training is especially important for tasks that require a team of people to do the work – for example, a document review project. When a team is doing the work, train them together as a group if that’s possible. That way, different interpretations of the rules will likely surface and team members will benefit from the questions of others.
Training should cover project overview information and a review and explanation of the procedures for doing the work. If there’s a subjective component to the work, review the subject matter outline or criteria. Have the team do sample work, review it right away, and go over it as a group.
Let me give you a more detailed training plan and outline, using training for a document review project as an example.
Prepare a Project Manual
As a starting point, prepare a manual for each team member. Include this information in the manual:
- Case Documents, such as the complaint and request for production;
- The Document Review Criteria, which provides guidelines for determining responsiveness and privilege;
- A List of Custodians with information about each such as his/her position in the organization, a description of his/her role in the events that are at issue, and the types of documents you expect will be found in the custodian’s files;
- Lists of Keywords, Key Characters, Key Events and Key Dates;
- The Review Procedures;
- The Review Schedule;
- Instructions for Resolving Questions;
- Instructions for Use of the Review Tool.
You’ll use this manual as the basis for the training, and in addition it will be a useful resource for each team member throughout the project.
Tomorrow I’ll give you a sample training agenda that you can use as a guide for your own training sessions.
What do you think? Have you seen the difference good training can make on a project? Do you have useful training tips to offer? Please share your comments or let us know if you’d like more information on a topic.