eDiscovery Daily Blog
More Self-Documentation Features for Review Solutions – eDiscovery Best Practices
As we discussed yesterday, one feature of review solutions that often gets overlooked is the ability for the review solution to automatically document searching and review activities. Not only does that make it easier to identify potential issues in the process; it also facilitates the ability for attorneys to demonstrate a defensible approach to discovery to the court.
Yesterday, we discussed self-documentation with regard to keeping a search history to support easy “tweaking” of searches and document the natural iterative process of searching, facilitating the ability for attorneys to demonstrate a defensible search approach to discovery to the court. Let’s discuss two other areas where self-documentation can assist in the discovery analysis and review process:
Review Set Assignment and Tracking: When a review effort requires multiple reviewers to meet the review and production deadline, assigning documents to each reviewer and tracking each reviewer’s progress to estimate completion is critical and can be extremely time consuming to perform manually (especially for large scale review projects involving dozens or even hundreds of reviewers). A review application, such as OnDemand®, that automates the assignment of documents to the reviewers and automatically tracks their review activity and throughput eliminates that manual time, enabling the review supervisor to provide feedback to the reviewers for improved review results as well as reassign documents as needed to maximize reviewer productivity.
Track Tag and Edit Activity: Review projects involving multiple attorneys and reviewers can be difficult to manage. The risk of mistakes is high. For example, privileged documents can be inadvertently tagged non-privileged and important notes or comments regarding individual documents can be inadvertently deleted. One or more of the users in your case could be making these mistakes and not even be aware that it’s occurring. A review application, such as OnDemand®, that tracks each tagging/un-tagging event and each edit to any field for a document can enable you to generate an audit log report to look for potential mistakes and issues. For example, generate an audit log report showing any documents where the Privileged tag was applied and then removed. Audit log reports are a great way to identify mistakes that have occurred, determine which user made those mistakes, and address those mistakes with them to eliminate future occurrences. Using the self-documentation feature of an audit log report can enable you to avoid inadvertent disclosures of privileged documents and other potential eDiscovery production issues.
So, what do you think? How important are self-documentation features in a review solution to you? Can you think of other important self-documentation features in a review solution? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.