Managed document review can aid you in your discovery process prior to a trial. As opposed to the discovery process after a trial, of course. Discovery is a critical part of any legal case, but in large corporate or class action cases, discovery can be extremely involved. If Bill Gates or Warren Buffet happen to be your client, cost isn't an issue, but most of us aren't fortunate enough to represent individuals with bottomless pockets. Inevitably the question arises, should you cut cost on discovery and allocate more resources to trying cases.

Cutting costs on discovery seems stupid, at least superficially. A single key piece of evidence can be the difference in a trial. Overlooking that piece of evidence can be catastrophic.

One problem in huge cases is that there are so many documents to assay that it is impossible to do if the client is billed at standard attorney rates.

Enter the managed document review process. You farm the task of reviewing documents to a third party source which bills at much lower rates. You specify parameters telling them exactly what they are looking for and what can be ignored. They separate the wheat from the chafe, leaving a much smaller pool of documents for you or your legal staff to review.

Managed document review is not infallible. If you are worried about extremely sensitive disclosures which may be highly damaging to a client, letting third parties examine documents is unwise. Smart reviewers must be used, but the smart the reviewers, the higher the cost.

For specialized subjects like science or accounting, cheap managed review is sometimes not possible. This is because only highly paid experts can even understand the documents. There is a duality in this situation. As even a lawyer can't understand such documents, managed review by experts must be used.

There are document review companies in nations like India, where highly educated individuals accept low wages Americans never would. This can be a good option, but if be aware that if documents have not been scanned, then they must be shipped, which can be risky. Transferring documents electronically is far preferable.

More and more, converting documents to computerized files is preferred. High speed scanners rapidly convert documents into computer files, and then OCR is run. OCR stands for optical character recognition software, and it converts scanned images into readable text. Documents must still be read, but searches of documents using keywords is still very helpful.

Some lawyers view managed document review as a profit drain, and figure it is better to just have staff review documents and bill the client. A markup can be charged for the service. Also, the client doesn't have to be told the task was farmed out, and can be unwittingly billed at standard legal prices.