Fact investigation is the bedrock of litigation, and in many cases document review is the bedrock of fact investigation. But in the modern age, when computers create and retain far more information than was ever before thought possible, the old model of manual document review is becoming increasingly unworkable.
Driven by 20th century notions of liberal discovery, that model is typically characterized by broad discovery demands, counsel's collection of all potentially responsive documents, and the manual review of those documents for responsiveness and privilege before production.
Whatever its merits in a paper-driven world, this approach is ill-suited to even midsize cases today, which can involve "documents," i.e., computer data, more voluminous than all of the information in a large library. To review that volume of material in the timeframes demanded in litigation or government investigations, clients must hire dozens or hundreds of temporary document reviewers. These reviewers march through the data in assembly-line fashion and separate it into responsive, non-responsive, privileged, and non-privileged piles, often without even trying to identify the small number of truly important documents.
Not only are such large numbers of reviewers expensive, but they can be notoriously difficult to manage and often produce uneven results.
As highlighted in a March 4, 2011, front-page New York Times story, however, technological solutions are emerging that will change how lawyers review documents.[FOOTNOTE 1] If these solutions work as expected, they will have significant implications for the practice of law. This article examines some of those implications from the vantage point of having substantial personal experience with some of these new tools.
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Source: law.com
By: Robert W. Trenchard and Steven Berrent
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