Rockville, MD — Many reviews begin without a roadmap. There are instructions, yes- even goals for the review.  But no guide to the process of reaching those destinations.  Documents are batched randomly or based on basic filters, and reviewers are left to wade through the noise (hoping to find the signal).

We take a different approach. Our reviews begin with deep Early Case Assessment (ECA), led by experienced attorneys who study the both the dataset and the case documents/protocols for patterns, risks, and key inflection points. These insights allow us to group documents meaningfully—based on factors like key players, known risk indicators, product lines, geography, terms of interest, and any other important issues raised with us by trial counsel.

Good ECA isn’t just observational.  It’s an active process.  In a way, it follows the classic explore/exploit dynamic.  You begin by exploiting the knowledge you have- the details of the matter, the needs of your claims/defenses, the identities of the communicators and custodians, etc.  Your discoveries based on this targeted exploration lead to new discoveries which you can then use to deepen your understanding and proceed further. 

You can then create workflow that doesn’t just manage or contain review effort, but drives it.  Rather than setting up a review in a manner that simply allows you to easily observe and track the data, you can create a review that continually unearths usable information. Information that not only informs the case team on matters of import for case strategy, but also information that feeds back into the ECA mechanics. In this way, ECA becomes a virtuous cycle which enforces efficient and precise review.

Dynamic ECA ensures that reviewers always know what they’re looking for. Each batch or task they take on comes with information on what that document set likely contains and which elements of the review should be their focus.  Review becomes faster, more consistent, and easier to supervise. And because ECA evolves throughout the life of a review, our teams are always adjusting and improving based on what we learn.

Good review starts with good planning. ECA is how we build smart review from the ground up.

Written By Brandon Mack, Counsel and Director of Legal Technology and AI