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Home / Client Resources /
Miranda Writes "Help Me Help You!" Talking Points to Get Colleagues on the E-Discovery Bandwagon Dear Miranda, Our firm is one of ten representing a large company in what has become a nationwide product liability class action. We want to avoid duplicating efforts among all the different attorneys assigned to document review. What is the best way to handle a review process with this many firms? Sophie L. Dallas, TX Dear Sophie, In cases such as yours, review can quickly turn into a logistical nightmare. For firms that still counsel their clients to print documents for review, it can also be a very costly undertaking as in-house counsel contends with printing all potentially relevant documents and shipping hundreds, if not thousands, of boxes around the country for review. Printing and shipping a million documents alone will cost your client an additional $160,000 in printing and delivery fees,1 and that's before any overhead associated with trying to track and manage all these documents for chain of custody purposes. Web-based review, on the other hand, lets in-house counsel leverage all the strengths of multi-law firm review while minimizing its complexity. Outside counsel will also benefit from a more efficient process that cuts down on needless replication and overhead associated with coordinating review with the other law firms. Specifically, there are four major benefits associated with keeping documents electronic for review purposes: 1. Review Management One of the most difficult issues associated with any multi-law firm review process is getting a quick update on the status of the case. In paperbased review, this means multiple calls just to get the most basic understanding of the status of the case ("How many boxes have you reviewed?" or "Are you almost finished with review of the CEO's documents?"). There is almost no way for in-house counsel to get a quick update of the status of the whole case, much less an update on review of documents associated with a particular custodian. A good Web-based review application, however, should always offer both outside counsel and in-house counsel "case at a glance" functionality. Summary screens are critical elements to these applications, allowing both the reviewers and the in-house legal team to see not only the overall case status, but to also drill down on the status of a single custodian or document collection if necessary. Equally as important is the fact that Web-based applications cut down dramatically on the duplication of efforts by allowing lead counsel to assign owners to custodians or specially created "custom collections." Attorneys can review what was assigned to them in a timely and efficient manner, and lead counsel and in-house counsel can track the status of the case by simply glancing at summary screens that cross-reference "reviewed", "not reviewed", "privileged", "responsive", or "hot" documents by custodian, or by custom collection. Finally, the consistent coding of documents can be very difficult when multiple law firms are involved. A good Web-based review application allows lead counsel to create and manage a common set of terms for coding documents, and programmatically enforce the use of those codes throughout the review process. Such review management functionality is more than just technical bells and whistles; it also dramatically lowers the cost of review while ensuring consistency, accuracy, and an informed client. 2. Productivity Another typical problem with multi-law firm review is the inability for lead counsel to quickly reassign parts of the review based on relative workloads. In cases where time is of the essence (and when isn't it these days?), managing workloads among so many attorneys is complicated. There is no practical way to ship boxes back and forth between law firms to take advantage of one firm's available attorneys while another firm bottlenecks the whole process because they have too many documents to review. Web-based review, however, lets you take advantage of relative workloads, shifting entire collections to other users with a few mouse clicks, providing for a more efficient review process by maximizing the resources across all parties involved in the review. 3. Control As if managing the review process isn't difficult enough, managing the production process can be even worse for clients who rely on paper-based review processes. Not only do participating law firms need to ship back responsive and "hot" documents, but "rolling productions" require sorting and organizing documents by custodial sources and/or parent child relationships (for emails and attachments), which can be difficult to say the least. Webbased review applications, however, allow a single outside law firm tasked with the job of managing productions to do so via the application itself. The lead law firm can manage Bates formats, assign Bates numbers, and create and manage "production templates" with consistent brands, ensuring that production to opposing counsel goes smoothly while overall costs are contained. In-house counsel can also access these productions to see what has been produced and to ensure the company is prepared if the case goes to trial. 4. Cost Savings Given that about ninety-eight percent of cases never make it to trial, discovery often makes up the bulk of the cost for most litigations. Not only is paper-based review typically triple the cost of electronic review, but it is also dramatically slower with more time devoted to managing the process rather than in actual document review. Simply put, the overhead associated with managing work among multiple law firms, printing, shipping, tracking, and producing documents while maintaining chain of custody amongst all the participants can quickly drive the cost of discovery to prohibitive levels. The costs associated with managing a nationwide case can be tremendous. If not managed properly, involvement of multiple law firms can be a hindrance rather than a benefit for in-house counsel. Fortunately, Web-based review was specifically designed to lower the costs of review by multiple attorneys or even multiple law firms without duplicating work and avoiding many of the traditional pitfalls of multi-law firm review. With the right technology, both in-house counsel and outside counsel can work together seamlessly to the benefit of all involved.  1 This example uses an average of 4 pages per document, 2500 pages per box and costs of $.14/per page to print on a laser printer plus $15 per box to ship via regular ground delivery. |
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