eTera consulting

In my last blog post, I provided the results of a recent survey asking contract attorneys in Washington, DC to select their favorite document review tools and the reasons why. In this blog post, I will provide some insights into why contract attorneys made their decisions and highlight some of the general comments received. After all, in order to improve and enhance document review management and the technology tools utilized, getting feedback from contract attorneys is important since they do the bulk of document review work.

• Fast and Easy Plus – Sounds simple enough but contract attorneys like document review tools that are fast, flexible and easy to use. This includes the ability to maneuver back and forth between documents, basic coding functions, quality control and redaction. In addition, some contract attorneys cited the ability for document review tools to allow for the bulk coding of documents as being important. The words that stand out among the contract attorneys in selecting their favorite document tools are “fast and easy” not to mention the basic plus functions.
• Search Terms and Attorney Names – Contract attorneys cited the importance of software tools that highlight search terms and attorney names. Tools that highlight search terms help contract attorneys make decisions regarding the responsiveness of documents. Tools that highlight attorney names help to ensure that privileged calls are made properly. Many contract attorneys indicated that their most important job is to make sure privilege calls are not missed.
• Document Searches – Contract attorneys also cited the importance of document review tools that provide the ability to conduct effective document searches. As several contract attorneys indicated, “some tools do, some tools don’t.” Included in this is the ability of review tools to provide clear indications of families. Several veteran contract attorneys commented that the ability to conduct complex searches is very important since they are looking for that “needle in a very big haystack.” In addition, several contract attorneys indicated that document searches is growing in greater importance given the size of data.
• Vendor Management and Training – The area of vendor management and training was by far very insightful and interesting to analyze. The contract attorney quote in my final paragraph below is highlighted because it represents best what several contract attorneys had to say about vendor management and in my view is a challenge to the legal vendor community. A number of contract attorneys commented that software is only good when hosted by a competent vendor. As one contract attorney put it, “very often vendors mess up and make the software look bad.” In addition, contract attorneys appreciate those vendors who provide excellent training (either in person or online) and are available when you need them. As noted by a number of contract attorneys, several vendors fall short in the area of training and timely customer support.

The contract attorney survey was indeed an interesting undertaking. What I took away from it is that there is no perfect document review tool and room for improvement. As promised, let me conclude this blog post with the following contract attorney quote. This certainly provides food for thought.

“Software firms assume that document reviewers will spend all their time working on one platform.  The reality, however, is reviewers may have to quickly adapt to three or even four different platforms in the space of six months.  So the reviewer endures a constant blizzard of esoteric commands and inadequate software training on each new project.  I'd like somebody, just once, to bake some user-friendliness into their system.  I'm tired of being stuck on uncooperative platforms where you have to beg for help constantly in performing basic coding functions.”

Posted by Joe Kanka, Vice President of Corporate Development, eTERA Consulting. Joe can be reached at jkanka@eteraconsulting.com.