Introduction to Document Review and E-Discovery

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Document Review includes the process of examining documents for the purpose of identification of relevant information for a legal matter. This concept serves two important things:-

1. Determination of a document based on relevance, responsiveness, privileged information or confidentiality.

2. To support litigation, regulatory compliance, due diligence, arbitration, or internal investigations.

Lawyers, legal associates, document reviewers, and contract attorneys often perform this work—sometimes as part of large teams perform document review.

E-Discovery or Electronic Discovery is a process of identifying, collecting, preserving, reviewing and producing electronically stored information for legal matters.

Key Stages of E-Discovery

The stages are often summarized as EDRM (Electronic Discovery Reference Model):

1. Identification – Finding sources of digital data
2. Preservation – Ensuring data isn’t altered or deleted
3. Collection – Legally obtaining the data
4. Processing – Filtering, de-duplication, and organizing
5. Review – Human review (document review) + technology-assisted review
6. Analysis – Extracting facts, patterns, timelines
7. Production – Delivering documents to court or opposing counsel
8. Presentation – Using evidence at hearings or trial

Tools like Relativity, Everlaw, DISCO, Reveal/Brainspace and Nuix are used for the process of E-Discovery.

Relationship Between Document Review and E-Discovery

To summarize, the relationship between document review and E-Discovery are as follows:-

  • E-discovery is the entire process involving electronic data in a legal matter.

  • Document review is a sub-process of e-discovery, focusing on examining the documents found during e-discovery.

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