Trends, Best Practices, &
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Outsourcing Document Review Reduces Burden on Legal Fraternity

Document Review job, when outsourced, is done by legal professionals working under qualified U.S. attorneys at a reasonable cost– in fact, significantly more economical than handling it in-house. Outsourcing document reviews are economically beneficial at a savings of generally 35% or more, plus saves time, allowing key staff to focus on more strategic elements in important cases.

The document review process is done by determining if the document that is discovered is relevant to the case in hand or not. Documents are bifurcated as responsive documents and non-responsive documents. When there is a Request For Production (RFP) of the documents, responsive documents are classified as privileged or non-privileged documents. Privileged documents are those documents which have attorney-client privilege in them, such as documents which contain any communication between the attorney and client relating to the case in hand. Privileged documents also include the attorney work product doctrine and/or any confidentiality rules and privacy laws. These privileged documents will not be produced on filing RFP.

Confidential documents are also not furnished in response to an RFP. Confidential documents include documents which contain confidential information about the party, such as its trade secrets. Confidential information will not be revealed to the opposing parties. Confidential information will be redacted if it is only a part of the document and produced or if the whole document contains confidential information. Responsive documents that contain any critical information about the case in hand will be marked as key or hot documents.

Document review has given more and more work to legal professionals, as attorneys are being outsourced to do this work. This model is less expensive than hiring temp support on-site since outsourcing vendors inherently offers the added benefit of working as an extended arm to any firm at a reasonable cost. They also can work with a faster turnaround time because multiple individuals can be activated immediately for rush jobs. Lastly, by selecting a trusted player in the market – like Vee LPO – the level of quality is guaranteed in writing when the contract is signed. Overall, outsourcing reduces work pressure from lawyers and allows them and their staff to focus on their particular specialized field of law.