The ultimate goal in eDiscovery is to produce a core set of evidence that will support your case strategy. Finding evidence requires eDiscovery document review, a critical stage of the process in which you examine the collected documents to determine if they are privileged, responsive, or relevant to the legal matter. Managed review, a structured and efficient approach to document review, plays a key role in achieving this objective. In addition to litigation, review happens in regulatory and government investigations, third-party subpoenas, internal investigations, and due diligence assessments.
Regardless of the situation, none can happen without some form of document review, but…
Too many documents, too little time
In most complex cases today, it’s not practical or desirable to review documents one-by-one. While linear review is practical in certain circumstances, the harsh reality is that document collections—along with costs and risks—continue to grow, overwhelming even the largest review teams.
According to the American Bar Association, document review comprises over 80% of total litigation spend. Data types and volume play a huge role in the cost of review.
The perils of unmanaged review
Historically, law firms have relied on a resource-intensive approach to document review, bringing in junior associates and perhaps contract attorneys hired to assist solely during review for a specific case. The partner meets with the team to discuss the case and instruct the reviewers on what to look for in the documents. Then reviewers are often left on their own—when in doubt, making subjective decisions, working long hours into the night.
This model, characterized by ad-hoc training and limited oversight (not to mention high costs), can lead to reviewer fatigue, coding errors, incorrect privilege assessments, and missed important documents.
In other cases, some companies conduct first-pass document review in-house to winnow down the document collection set, then send the subset of document to outside counsel, who in turn staff up with associates and contract attorneys to do a deeper dive. Again, this model results in significant attorney review costs and risks.
To address the challenges of the traditional document review model, many law firms and corporations have adopted managed review, a more structured and systematic approach that leverages specialized document review attorneys, other legal professionals, technologists, and experts in data science.
What is managed review?
Managed review means you are not just hiring temporary reviewers; you’re integrating experienced project managers, experienced attorney reviewers, proven processes, and perhaps innovative technology into the process. A playbook and thorough review protocol describes the role of the managed review team, the law firm, and the client. It also outlines the review procedure, classification criteria, review workflow, and quality assurance (QA) processes that will be followed—all overseen by the managed review project manager.
Outsourcing the review removes the need to delegate other crucial attorneys to acquire, train, and manage temporary workers so your staff can focus on advancing legal strategy, while also saving money.
Why implement managed review?
Integrating managed review increases efficiency, cost-savings, and quality in managing complex and voluminous information by providing the following to law firms and in-house legal departments:
Team alignment
A foundational element for a successful managed review is alignment between the managed review team, external counsel, and the company—set forth in the playbook.
Alignment also creates the opportunity for consistent and accurate review at the outset, with comprehensive QC processes for privilege, responsive, non-responsive, PII, PHI, hot documents and more throughout the review. Reviewer reports, decision logs, individual sample QC, testing, and feedback provided by the managed review team—while counsel resolves every conflict—ensures an efficient workflow and high accuracy.
Moreover, alignment at the start allows the managed review team to resolve issues quickly, guiding the reviewers in navigating challenges and proactively identifying issues and developing solutions or workarounds.
Access to innovative technology and AI
Clients don’t expect (or want) to pay for their outside law firms’ learning curves to get up to speed on new technology. Managed review providers can optimize your use of technology to its fullest potential, maximizing its value to your team.
Today, this extends to AI. Managed review providers have the technical expertise to navigate the sheer volume of new AI and test which ones will best address what problems their clients are trying to solve, whether AI-forward review methods or using generative AI for privilege logging.
In fact, according to a 2024 Litigation Survey of more than 200 law firm and corporate litigation leaders, more than 64% are accessing AI tools through their alternative legal service providers.
Expertise without the overhead
Law firms and in-house legal teams are increasingly challenged to provide top-tier document review services without incurring additional overhead in the form of people. To address this, many are turning to managed review providers with specialized expertise in data science, statistics, technology, and industry and software certifications (e.g., Project Management Professional or PMP, Certified E-Discovery Specialist or CEDS, Relativity, Brainspace, Reveal). By leveraging these resources, organizations can enable their attorneys to focus on core legal tasks, delivering maximum value to clients while minimizing overhead costs.
Heightened review quality
Ensuring quality control is crucial while reviewing documents, and critical to defensibility. To deliver quantifiably superior results, managed review providers not only use technology that guarantees more precise and economical document review; they incorporate QC review, 360-degree reviewer feedback, automated production checks, and statistical sampling to validate the quality of all productions.
And when robust QC processes are employed at the start of a project as part of team alignment, the managed review team can substantially reduce QC efforts, resulting in lower project costs.
Rapid scalability
Managed review providers offer unmatched flexibility to meet fluctuating litigation demands. With a core team of experienced professionals, they can rapidly scale resources to accommodate surges in workload.
By utilizing dual-shore attorney reviewer teams, firms and in-house counsel can effectively handle time-sensitive productions and tasks such as exception documents, while optimizing costs.
Adaptability to changes in scope
Even the most well-planned out managed review can have changes in scope. New information is surfaced, for example, which includes additional custodians and data sources. When changes occur, managed review teams can nimbly evolve with the times—being ready to modify the methodology or even the review team.
In all types of reviews—not just first-pass review or issue coding—managed review drives efficiency and cost-savings.
Expertly managing managed review
Integrated managed review into your eDiscovery processes offers numerous benefits, including cost savings, increased efficiency, and enhanced quality control. By reassigning junior attorneys to more strategic tasks, firms and in-house teams alike can boost productivity and efficiency while delivering superior document review services.
UnitedLex provides managed review services to the largest corporations and law firms worldwide. Let’s talk.
