Proactive Approach to Document Review Reduces Risk and Increases Readiness
A large corporation anticipating recurring litigation of similar claims needed a more effective responsive review process. For each new lawsuit, the company’s existing process required enormous resource mobilization. How could the review work be consolidated? Could it be conducted systematically to enhance preparedness for future litigation? And how could the process be improved to ensure compliance with the discovery obligations outlined in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)?
Transforming Ad Hoc Searches into a Streamlined Process
To meet the client’s requirements, we designed a standardized, reusable process to streamline review for production. The process would reduce the need to deploy expensive review teams on short notice as new lawsuits arose.
Our linguists, legal specialists, researchers, and information retrieval experts worked closely with the client to create detailed review criteria for identifying information relevant to current and anticipated litigation. We incorporated these criteria into an automated solution to review document collections with unparalleled speed and accuracy.
Peace of Mind through Ongoing Automated Document Review
Once our process was in place, our client delivered to us, on a quarterly basis, electronic copies of all new documents that might be subject to production. We assessed relevance and then returned the codes for the relevant documents in a format compatible with the client’s case management software.
To ensure compliance with Rule 26(b) and legal defensibility, we worked with the client and its litigation consultant to rigorously benchmark the new system’s accuracy against the client’s best alternative—its existing manual review process.
Exceeded Expectations
The results at the end of our six-month benchmarking period vastly surpassed our client’s expectations. Our new document review process reduced the risk of missing responsive documents and the risk of non-compliance by more than 90 percent over the incumbent manual review process. Our process also reduced costs by more than 50 percent, saving the client nearly $30 million annually.
Most importantly, the client is now better prepared to handle future litigation.
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