Extract from Mike Hamilton’s article “Logistical Best Practices for Managing a Document Review”
With market forces demanding in-house legal departments do “more with less,” legal operations and legal project management are disciplines whose time has arrived. More and more in-house departments and law firms are hiring professionals (whether legal pros or project management specialists) to ensure that projects come in on-time and on-budget. But unfortunately, not every legal department has the luxury of hiring dedicated project managers or operations specialists. Sometimes legal pros, whether paralegals or attorneys, have to make do. But mastering the basics of e-discovery project management is possible–and we’re here to help. Exterro has updated its Comprehensive Guide to E-Discovery Project Management with new articles, case law, and expert opinions, so you can learn and apply principles to make e-discovery less costly, less time-consuming, and more defensible.
Activities on the left-hand side of the EDRM tended to be the first ones brought in-house, so legal hold checklists, while definitely valuable, are low-hanging fruit. But many organizations still outsource activities further on the right side of the EDRM–especially document review. But that’s an area where in-house departments can still achieve some cost- and time-savings, if they know where to look.
Document review is becoming even more important for organizations in today’s environment. Beyond its e-discovery use cases, organizations use document review for internal investigations, data subject access requests, privacy compliance, data breach investigations and notifications, and more. And advances in review technology have provided more efficiency, cost-savings, and security benefits than ever before! If you’re considering whether or not you’re ready to bring document review in-house, we’ve pulled together a great self-assessment checklist for you to use.
