David R. Cohen, Reed Smith
Litigation document review can be one of the most time-intensive parts of litigation, and comprises a large part of the work performed by many thousands of attorneys, across the U.S. and beyond. Yet, there is little guidance available to help attorneys navigate the ethical dilemmas they may encounter during the document review process. The purpose of this article is to provide attorneys engaged in e-discovery document review—and the attorneys who supervise them—with suggestions for sound and ethical decision-making practices.
Most litigation reviews of client documents are focused on two primary decisions about each document encountered:
- Is the document relevant/responsive? And, if so,
- Is it protected by attorney client privilege, the work product doctrine, or any other applicable privilege or protection that would exempt it from production?
