Project Management

 

Training for a task should be thorough and aimed at teaching the team what they need to know to do the work correctly and efficiently.  It should cover project overview information, procedures for doing the work, and sample work.  Here’s a sample training agenda for a document review project that you can use as a guide:

Case Background Information

• A description of the parties
• A description of the events that led to the case
• A description of the allegations and defenses
• An overview of the expected case schedule

Project Overview

• A description of the goals of the document review project
• A description of the process
• An overview of the expected project schedule

Responsive Criteria

• Go through the criteria – point by point – to ensure the group understands what is responsive and what is privileged
• Provide samples of documents that are responsive and documents that are not responsive

Mechanics

• Describe the roles of individuals on the team (reviewers, quality control staff, supervisors, project managers, etc.)
• Review the procedures for the review
• Train the team how to use the online review tool

Samples

• Have the team do some sample work and turn it in
• Review the sample work and go over it as a group

The first items on the agenda  — case background and project overview information — are very important.  While they don’t directly cover the mechanics of the work the team will be doing, these topics are significant for motivating the team.   The team will “invest” more in the project if they understand the big picture and how the work they are doing fits in.  In fact, it’s always a good idea to have a senior litigation team member participate in the overview portion of the training.  This further emphasizes the importance of the work the team will be doing.

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.

 

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.

Last week, on Wednesday and Thursday, we talked about assembling an electronic discovery team.  That’s not the only team you might need.  You may need to assemble a team for a specific task — for example, for a document review.

It’s essential that you assign the right type of people to a task.  For many litigation projects, this means deciding whether attorneys or non-attorneys will do the work.

Pushing the work up to over-qualified people can be just as problematic as using under-qualified people.   I’ve seen first hand how important this is.  I once worked on two large cases simultaneously where millions of documents had to be reviewed in each case.  In one case, I convinced the client that paralegals could handle the bulk of the work.  In the other case, the client insisted that only lawyers could do the work.

I don’t have to tell you how much more the second client paid for the work.  You may be surprised, however, by the quality comparison.  Each project involved multiple law firms, and one firm was involved in both.  That firm did quality control on both projects, and found that there was significantly less re-work required in the project where paralegals did most of the work.

Why?  We gave the paralegals objective criteria that didn’t require a law degree to understand, and they were far more attentive to work that made the lawyer’s eyes glaze over.  The lawyers — who were responsible for making decisions, answering questions, and reviewing work — were able to stay attentive to the more substantive work.

This is where breaking a task into components can help.  Here’s an example.  Everyone knows that determining privilege is an attorney task.  That doesn’t mean, however, that only attorneys can work on the project.  In every collection there are types of documents that will never be privileged unless they bear privileged annotations (published materials, annual reports, case-specific documents like routine manufacturing and quality control reports, etc.).  A trained paralegal using good criteria can do an initial review to identify potentially privileged documents for attorney review.

A project handled like this will certainly cost less, and will probably result in more consistent, higher quality work.

Have you worked on projects where the wrong people did the work?  Please share your comments or let us know if you’d like more information on a topic.

Yesterday, we talked about the skill sets and areas of expertise that are required to effectively handle an electronic discovery project.  Those skills and expertise are diverse and you won’t find everything you need in a single person.  You need to put together a team.  So, where do you find the right people for your team?    Most likely your team can be made up of individuals from these sources:

Law Firm Personnel

• Partners, associates and paralegals working on the case will have knowledge of the facts at issue and the strategy for using documents.  They will know what documents are responsive, privileged, significant, helpful and harmful.  They will also have knowledge of the litigation process and the rules of civil procedure.  Paralegals are also likely to have a very good handle on the document collection as the case moves forward.
• Law firm litigation/practice support and technical staff will have knowledge of the electronic discovery process, electronic discovery tools and electronic discovery service providers.  They also may have skills in collecting forensically sound data.  And, litigation support professionals will have project management skills.

Client Personnel

• Members of the corporate legal department will have knowledge of the issues in the case, the case strategy and goals, the documents, and the business operations and key characters at issue.
• Corporate IT and records management personnel will have knowledge of the computer systems in use at the client’s offices, knowledge of document retention, computer use, backup and disaster recovery policies and practices, and how and where documents are stored and accessed.
• Client personnel who are familiar with the business units, facts and events that are at issue in the case, and the relevant documents that are likely to exist.

External Resources

Depending on what tasks need to be done and on what computing resources /expertise you require, you may need to add electronic discovery consultants, service providers, and forensics experts to your team.  You may not need to involve them right away.  You might get the rest of the team in place and have the team determine what external resources are needed.  If, however, you are inexperienced with electronic discovery, involving a consultant early can be invaluable.

What do you think?  Who do you include on your electronic discovery teams?  Please share your comments and let us know if you’d like more information on a particular topic.

 

There are lots of tasks associated with a large electronic discovery project.  A number of skill sets and areas of expertise are required to do them all well.  It’s not likely that all of those skills and knowledge will reside in a single person.  You need to create the right electronic discovery team to ensure that there are no glitches.

Under a common case scenario that involves collecting electronic discovery, processing, analyzing/culling, review, and production, you should have all of these areas covered:

• Knowledge of electronic discovery:  Knowledge of the process, technology tools, and service providers.
• Technical knowledge and skills:  Skills in collecting forensically sound and defensible data and knowledge of your client’s technology systems and practices.
• Knowledge of your client’s document policies and practices:  Knowledge of document retention policies and practices and knowledge of what types of files exist and how and where they are stored and accessed.
• Knowledge of the facts at issue in the case, and the strategy for using documents in the case:  You need someone who can make decisions on what document content is responsive, privileged, significant, helpful, and harmful.
• Familiarity with the cast of characters and knowledge of who is likely to have documents and knowledge about what.
• Knowledge of the litigation process and the rules of civil procedure that apply to electronic discovery.
• Expertise in search technology, techniques and strategies.
• Project management skills and experience.

It is critical that a project manager is identified early on.  There are lots of steps in the process that will require continuous oversight and monitoring.  The project manager will be responsible for creating project plans, creating budgets and schedules, identifying required resources, ensuring that decisions are made by the right people, ensuring that deadlines are met, and so on.  On a case with a large electronic discovery collection and a short schedule, this is a full-time job.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about what types of people are likely to have the right skill sets, and then we’ll move on to assembling the right team for a specific task that requires significant numbers of people.

What do you think?  Who do you include on your electronic discovery teams?  Please share your comments and let us know if you’d like more information on a particular topic.

Yesterday, we talked about why written procedures are important in eDiscovery and the types of procedures you should be writing.  Today I’m going to give you some tips for creating effective procedures.

First, let me say that writing procedures is easy.  In fact, it’s probably the easiest writing task you’ll ever do.  You don’t need to be creative.  You don’t need to develop an elegant writing style. In fact, the best procedures are simple and to the point.  All that’s required to write good procedures is knowledge of how to do the task and some guidelines.  Here are the guidelines:

• When possible break a task down into its subcomponents and draft procedures for each sub-component.  It’s likely that different parts of a task may be handled by different people and done at different times.  Each component, therefore, should have its own set of procedures.  For example, your procedures for collecting responsive data may have components for notifying custodians, interviewing custodians, copying the data, maintaining records, and preparing and transporting media.
• Use simple, clear language.  Keep sentences short and simple.  Use simple words.  If you are writing instructions to be used by attorneys, avoid using technical terms and acronyms with which they may not be familiar.
• Make the procedures detailed.  Assume your reader doesn’t know anything about the task.
• Make sure the steps are well organized and in the right order.
• Format the procedures so that they are easy to read.  Use bullets, numbered points, and outline formats.  It’s much easier to follow instructions that are clearly laid out in steps than it is to follow procedures written in paragraphs.  This, incidentally, makes it easier to write procedures.  You don’t need to worry about the flow of sentences or paragraphs.  You just really need to put together a set of clear bullet points.
• When possible, use illustrations:  If you are providing instructions for using a technology tool, include screenshots, and mark up those screen shots with annotations such as arrows and circles to emphasize the instructions.

It’s always a good idea to test your procedures before you apply them.  Ask someone who hasn’t done the task before to apply the procedures to a sample of the work.  Holes in the procedures will surface quickly.

So, what do you think?  Do you have any good tips for drafting procedures in eDiscovery?  Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

 

Even for simple eDiscovery tasks, good written procedures are critical.  They will:

• Ensure that everyone doing the work understands the task.
• Cut down or eliminate inconsistencies in the work product.
• Cut down or eliminate the need for re-work.
• Foster efficiencies that will help prevent cost over-runs and missed deadlines.
• Eliminate time spent “reinventing the wheel” each time a task is done.

Written procedures are a good idea for all tasks, but they are especially important for work done by multiple people.  Often procedures are overlooked for simple tasks.  It’s easy to feel comfortable that everyone will do a simple task well.  The problem is that it’s very easy for two people to interpret a task differently.  When you have a large group of people working on a task – for example, a group doing a review of an electronic document collection – the potential for inconsistent work is enormous.

Let me give you some examples of the types of procedures you should be creating:

• Procedures for gathering potentially responsive documents from your client:  These procedures should include instructions for notifying custodians, for interviewing custodians, for the tools that are to be used, for the types of copies that are to be made, for the storage media to be used, for keeping records of the collection effort, and for delivering data for subsequent processing.
• Procedures for a document review:  These procedures should include clear, objective criteria for responsiveness and privilege, instructions for using the review tool, instructions for retrieving batches of documents to review, and instructions for resolving questions.

In a perfect world, you would have detailed, written procedures for all of the tasks that you do yourself, and for all of the tasks done by those who report to you.  Unfortunately, most organizations aren’t there yet.  If you don’t have a complete set of procedures yet, create them whenever a task is at hand.  Over time, you will build a library of procedures for the tasks that you handle.  Procedures are not hard to write.  Tomorrow I’ll give you some tips that will serve as a guideline for creating effective procedures.

So, what do you think?  Have you worked on eDiscovery projects where written procedures would have helped?  Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.