In many different aspects of business, particularly in investigations into business practices or in the process of mergers or acquisitions, a company will find they are told they need to hire a document review attorney.
In most cases, this is really a law firm where a document review attorney works with other training and experienced support staff to review hundreds to thousands of documents, typically online, to determine their relevance and to create a structure for organizing and assessing the information contained in the documents.
The Cost Factor
The biggest issue with a document review is the cost involved. Each of the documents has to be read, classified as relevant or irrelevant and also then sub-categorized as to the specifics of the investigation or review.
It is possible to use multiple levels or types of teams to complete the document review process, thus helping to save money by having the low relevance, high volume types of emails and documents reviewed by trained staff under the supervision of an attorney rather than by an actual lawyer. This will save considerable costs and can also speed up the document review process.
Using Technology
Typically, before the actual reading and categorizing of the documents will begin, the document review attorney will establish keywords and determine other criteria to immediately identify the high relevance documents.
In many businesses, these high relevance documents will be reviewed in-house. This also helps to decrease the cost of outsourcing the service because some percentage of the documents will not be reviewed by the outside legal team.
The combination of lower total document numbers plus the ability to use trained reviewers who are not attorneys is a great cost-saving factor. However, there should always be a licensed attorney at the review location, ensuring all aspects of the process are completed accurately and correctly.
