Law firms are always looking for ways to provide more value to their clients and differentiate themselves from other firms. While technology is an important part of providing additional value for eDiscovery document review, a more effective review occurs when attorneys know how to use the technology creatively.

A recipe for success

Lawyers can prioritize documents for review, quickly identify relevant files and save their clients time and money by combining their case and practice expertise with knowledge of the right technology. Add in understanding of basic human behavior and the language of business communications, and attorneys can improve the results of document review even more.

The human element of eDiscovery

Litigation typically stems from disagreements in our experience. Various disagreements can lead to emotional exchanges that often show up in electronically stored information (ESI), including email, chat and text communication. Through this work, we’ve learned that when emotions are high, people’s guards come down and they communicate more passionately. Smart attorneys who use this awareness to devise lists of terms to help prioritize review and pinpoint potentially significant documents in order to more efficiently identify the most compelling evidence for their cases.

For example, my consulting team developed a list of provocative terms, including “damn” and “what the hell,” that can indicate high emotion — often anger. Terms such as “kiss,” in professional emails are likely worth a closer look as they may indicate inappropriate relationships.

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Recently, Ricoh was engaged to assist a client with a legal malpractice matter. We used our provocative terms list and also worked with the client to formulate their own list of relevant search terms. That process uncovered emails that, upon closer examination, revealed a pattern of disparaging remarks and infighting at the firm. This led to poor work product and over-billing. This creative analysis helped the plaintiff win a large settlement quickly.

Get creative, reduce costs

When developing a list of terms, be creative. Draw on your experience from other cases to come up with a list of terms that will send up a red flag. Also look for words that signal that an email is likely irrelevant. For example, try this during your next review: Search for the word “unsubscribe.” This term is likely to pop up often because of a U.S. law designed to allow recipients to “opt out” of potential spam. Try it and see how much potentially irrelevant material it weeds out. By using your knowledge and imagination, you can come up with other words that flag irrelevance in a particular case.

The RAND Group organizes document production costs into three tasks: collecting, processing and reviewing documents. Within that, review makes 73 percent of the total costs are attributed to producing electronic documents. The savings in time and money from streamlining the review process can be substantial. Attorneys’ charges are significant for document review services, and they review an average of 60 documents an hour. Do the math, and you quickly realize that savings can be tens of thousands of dollars for your client.

You can also use this approach to protect your client from having to hand over material that is not only irrelevant, but also potentially embarrassing or damaging to its reputation. In government regulatory cases, for example, you can sometimes negotiate to run certain filters that will potentially weed out emails that contain crude language or inappropriate jokes.

Start today

The expertise of a technology consultant, combined with an attorney’s skills and knowledge, can make a big difference in the effectiveness and cost of the pre-review process.