More law firms are producing electronically stored information without going through linear review. After potentially-relevant ESI has been collected and sent out for processing, the producing party is normally focused on boiling down the ocean of documents and identifying privileged documents for sequestering. Linear review of the identified subset has been the traditional last step and most expensive in the production cycle.
Advanced analytics, judicial acceptance of computer aided coding, claw back/quick-peek agreements, and aggressive use of Rule 16 hearings have given attorneys a level of confidence that they can produce responsive ESI without spending time and money on a final linear review.
An attorney at a major law firm recently said to me, “In many cases we just give them what they want without reviewing them. Usually after our interviews and privilege cull using analytics and sampling, we have a pretty good idea of what we have and we don’t want to waste our client’s money on attorneys going through every single document before production … and yes we do use claw back agreements”.
