B. Joan Davis Bankruptcy Law Blog on Lawyers.com

Document Review in Litigation and Investigations

Monday, September 28, 2009 by B. Joan Davis

Document Review in Litigation

Document review, or more commonly know as doc review, is an essential task performed by a Raleigh bankruptcy attorney either in anticipation of any legal proceedings or during the discovery phase of the litigation process. As part of the document review process, an attorney assesses any documents and evaluates their relevance as related to the case as well as the law.

During later stages of the document review process, documents may be labeled as privileged based upon criteria regarding attorney-client privilege, work product, etc. If a document is deemed to be privileged, it can be withheld from production or its content may be revised.

Document review is a tedious and daunting task. In many cases, the work is completed by contract attorneys or temporary employees with another attorney acting as a manager overseeing the process. Failure to appropriately label documents could lead to unintentional disclosure of important information which could ultimately lead to an undesirable outcome.

With the increasing volumes of documents that need to be reviewed for litigation and investigations, it is essential to manage documents, both paper and electronic, properly. The appointed manager should properly train any reviewers and relay any pertinent legal information for the case. There should also be protocols set in place for reviewing and storing electronic documents. In addition, steps should be taken to encrypt any electronic data to prevent inadvertent leakage of information.

Lack of a legal supervisor or poor management by that legal supervisor could be detrimental to the case. However, taking the time to collect and organize the documents and subsequently to outline an effective strategy before beginning the document review process can give a document review manager more control over the process resulting in fewer errors and a more streamlined process overall.

This article has been provided by Raleigh bankruptcy attorneys Howard, Stallings, From & Hutson, P.A., Raleigh, NC, 919-821-7700, www.howardstallings.com

Posted at 09:53 AM

Topic: Bankruptcy