Doing Document Review Right

Document review.  Two words that can strike fear into the hearts of both attorneys and clients alike.  

Most attorneys dread the monotonous nature of clicking through hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of electronic documents and making sure each one ends up in the correct “bucket”. As a former document review attorney who has reviewed millions of documents and billed tens of thousands of hours doing doc review, I know exactly how this feels, but I have a secret: I actually liked it. And I’m not alone. 

From the client’s perspective, document review means expense.  Specifically, paying a bunch of associates at major firm billing rates to sit in front of a computer and sift through documents for 8 to 12 hours a day, sometimes longer, has sent more than one client to the bargaining table who had vowed not to give up their fight.

As a result, firms have struggled with balancing the need to keep the costs to clients as low as possible and the desire to take advantage of one of the more lucrative niches left in litigation practice.  On the theory that firm-branded associates do the job better than contractors, for quite a few years some lucky firms have managed to keep bill rates for doc review up. Their lawyers mostly hated the work, because they really wanted to be courtroom mavens or briefing stars, but they kept at it as long as they could.  Eventually, savvy clients forced a large swath of the business to the low-bid doc review providers, often headlined by large multinational consulting firms who then added a layer of complexity and expense by subcontracting out provision of reviewers to smaller recruiting firms who, left with no choice and no direct accountability to the ultimate client, today typically offer pay as low as $20/hour to fully licensed attorneys for document review.

A third bucket of providers, still small (we are, in all honesty, the only one I know of), could not stand that model and decided to find a way to combine quality and affordability in the document review niche. As a former document review specialist myself, one who scored in the 97th percentile on my LSAT and did well in law school also, I have always known that there were others like me.  One leader in the space, Counsel Unlimited, sought to deploy teams of professional, dedicated, high-quality contract attorneys, and several years ago I became one of them. What I learned was that when I was in a team of high-quality contract attorneys and not just the standout among a bunch of scrubs, the process ran SO MUCH SMOOTHER than it ever had before. Ultimately, what Counsel Unlimited provides, is a headache-free, reasonably priced document review project that contrasts starkly with many others I had been on.  Some of those had dragged on forever, dogged by constant mistakes, corrections, and attorney turnover.

What makes a high-quality document review attorney and how do I make sure I’ve found one?  Well, we can’t give up all our secrets in a public post, and I can assure you that my LSAT score is not the only reason I’ve always been considered a strong reviewer, but a few critical observations are worthy of mention  First, the attorney needs to have extensive document review experience. Just like anything else, experience makes a difference. I have worked on projects with some very smart attorneys (some with Ivy League JDs and Am Law 50 pedigrees) who had no document review experience. More often than not, they struggled to grasp the concepts of document review.

Second, the best document review attorneys also have the ability to make quick, confident decisions with just a brief scan of a document.  There is a rhythm you have to achieve in order to code large quantities of documents consistently and correctly. Experience fuels confidence and the best document review attorneys have both.  

Third, a high-quality document review attorney must be able to follow instructions and, when necessary, ask clear and concise questions.  It sounds simple, right? You are given a set of instructions written by a project manager or an attorney leading the project, and you code the documents according to the instructions.  The problem is that there are always documents that do not fit the instructions.  This is where a high-quality document review attorney can save your project time and money.  Being able to interpret instructions and think outside the box is why some attorneys are better at document review than others.  The best are able to take a document that may not fit exactly into a certain set of categories and find the best possible fit, and do that fast.  The alternative is indecision which leads to time build up, decreased productivity and, ultimately, higher costs.

Finally, there is lifestyle.  Because being good at document review takes experience, intelligence, and stamina, yet no document review specialist is ever going to make a seven-figure income like most of today’s associates at AmLaw 100 firms are hoping for, a good document reviewer has to be comfortable in the job.  It has its perks, trust me. They just are not the same perks some others seek.

So, back to the initial question of why your firm or company should use an experienced staffing agency that sources only high-quality contract attorneys like Counsel Unlimited.  In a nutshell, your client will spend less money, and you will spend less time and suffer less stress.

But aren’t most staffing agencies the same?

Unfortunately, over the last decade or so, the document review industry has seen a continual race to the bottom in terms of hourly rates for project attorneys.  These lower rates often mean clients end up using inexperienced attorneys, who, as I am happy to explain to anyone for whom math is a challenge (hours x rate=pain factor), can end up costing your client more over the lifetime of a project.  Slower reviews, increased need for second-level review, and repeated questions to supervisors are the key drag elements. They can add up to hundreds of hours over the life of a typical project.

So, obviously, one key factor in providing high-quality document review attorneys is willingness to pay a bit more per hour.  It turns out that doing so saves money, chiefly because it takes less time to complete the review. But you can’t just pay that same, higher rate to everyone who answers your call for reviewers or you wind up with a massive pile of resumes and no ability to engage quickly, or higher costs without higher quality.  That’s where we earn our keep. At Counsel Unlimited, we make it our business to constantly seek out the document reviews in progress in any market we are in and, frankly, identify the stars on those reviews and poach them. There you go, that’s our secret. But if it were easy to do, everyone would do it. If you’ve read this far, you already know they don’t.   

Quote I read recently at my auto mechanic’s shop: “You think hiring a professional is expensive? Try hiring an amateur.”

To sum up, attempting to keep document review in house, even in a “captive” review center where some firms bill north of $150/hour for reviewers, is an invitation to lose business from your clients. You MUST go with outside contractors in order to achieve the cost savings necessary in most cases.  But it pays to seek out a review team provider with the experience and reputation to only source high-quality, experienced contract attorneys for your review. To make this work, you MUST steel your client for the concept that they should not turn the review over to a provider who will seek low-bid subcontractors.  Turning the review over to a multi-national provider, such as the consulting firms who typically call us for help fixing their capacity problems, may only serve to add a layer of middleman that will ultimately cost them money. At Counsel Unlimited, we do not accept every project, but when we do accept one, we bring to bear our market knowledge and our ability to pick reviewers and we serve up only proven reviewers who excel at what they do and, in most cases, actually enjoy it. We take care of the heavy administrative lifting so the attorneys show up (or log in) ready to work, and we stay accountable to you and, if you prefer, your client. As a result, the savings of time, money and stress will provide you with the most successful and seamless document review experience.

It’s best for us to get to know each other early, before you have an immediate need, so that we can be ready in your market when it’s time.  For more information about our services, please contact me at MD@counselunlimited.com.