There are "dos" and "don'ts" for conducting an effective manual review. There was an interesting article in Texas Lawyer (via Law Technology News) entitled The 7 Deadly Sins of Document Review by Dalton Young that focuses on the "don'ts". As review is the most expensive phase of the eDiscovery process and legal budgets are stretched to the limit, it's important to get the most out of your spend on manual review.
With that in mind, here are the seven deadly sins of document review (along with a few of observations):
1. Hiring overqualified reviewers:
Although there are many qualified lawyers available due to the recent recession, those lawyers often don't have as much experience as seasoned review paralegals, who are also less expensive and less likely to leave for another offer.
2. Failing to establish a firm time commitment:
If lead counsel doesn't clearly establish the expected review timeline up front and expect reviewers to commit to that time frame, turnover of reviewers can drive up costs and delay project completion.
3. Failing to provide reviewers with thorough training on the review tools:
Train beyond just the basics so that reviewers can take advantage of advanced software features and training starts with lead counsel. Lead counsel needs to become fully proficient on the review tools, then develop a workflow that manages the efficiency of the reviewers and train the reviewers according to that workflow. While it may be nice for reviewers to know all of the advanced search features, full understanding of searching best practices isn't something that can be accomplished in a single training session and should be managed by someone with considerable experience using advanced searching capabilities in an efficient and defensible manner.
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