Document review process with Legal Managed Services

In today’s fast-paced litigation environment, it can be challenging for a legal department to keep pace with the mushrooming litigation demands – and the shrinking timelines – of contemporary electronic discovery. In a situation where a large number of documents have to be reviewed and produced on a short deadline, litigators are unlikely to maximize efficiencies by simply throwing reviewers a data set to churn through documents. Our consultative process-driven approach to document review ensures that our clients benefit from the cost-saving benefits of intelligent culling techniques and the efficiencies of a Six Sigma-driven review process.

Challenge

The document review arose out of a class action on behalf of consumers of Basic Co. branded microwaves, alleging several design and/or manufacturing defects in the products.

The vast scope of the data collection – spanning several years’ worth of documents and over a dozen custodians – presented a significant challenge. This was compounded by a demanding timeline: Basic Co.’s tight production deadline, and with two months to go, the data set consisted of nearly two million documents.

Solution

Our Early Case Assessment process is centered on early data culling. In the Basic Co. case, one of the Legal Managed Services e-discovery experts analyzed the data set and worked with Basic Co.’s outside counsel to filter and cull nonresponsive files prior to the document review. As a result of this two-phased document review process, the original document set was reduced from 1.92 million to 993,000 and ultimately brought down to 764,849 documents.

We began the initial stages of the review with only 34 days to go before the production deadline. In order to review the remaining 764,849 documents, Legal Managed Services set an internal deadline of 29 days in which to complete its review. It established a tiered document review process that included first-line review of documents, quality checks of the documents, and quality audits. Legal Managed Services project managers utilized search terms to create and assign subpopulations of similar documents to achieve higher reviewer throughput.

Legal Managed Services emphasized rigorous and continuous training on the subject matter of the case, including regular written document escalations to Basic Co.’s counsel. This also included a sample delivery at the beginning of the review to ensure that Basic Co.’s instructions were applied correctly, as well as periodic conference calls that facilitated communication and seamless knowledge transfer.

Lastly, further analysis of the data set continued in parallel with the review, resulting in the removal of an additional 136,000 documents from the review population. The Legal Managed Services team was able to successfully review the approximately 626,000 remaining documents in 29 days.