DOCUMENT CODING AND ITS PROCESS / WORKFLOW

Posted by skjjuris on December 21st, 2018

Document coding is the process of identifying and extracting information specific to each document into a common form to ensure a well-organized later date search. Our company as skilled and dedicated Indian attorneys, who are well versed with the complexities of document coding. Our team has worked on various platforms including Relativity. Our company offers the following document coding and review services:

Objective coding

The basic purpose of coding is to organize a collection of information into a database and retrieving the same, as and when necessary. We have a well-defined process to analyze and understand the project specifications. This helps our team to understand client’s requirements and execute assignments both efficiently and accurately.

Subjective coding

Subjective Coding is a more comprehensive coding process in addition to the objective coding that includes keywords and relevant data coding from the document text. Such coding is flexible and specific to client requirements.

The fields usually included for objective coding are:

• Begin Bates
• End Bates
• Document Type
• Document Title
• Document Date
• Date Estimated
• Author
• Recipient
• Copies
• Document Characteristics
• Names mentioned within text

*The fields can be different subject to clients’ requirements.

Our project manager co-ordinates with the tool provider’s authorized personnel, and ensures that admin, user, QC logins as well as downtime, etc. are seamlessly reported and managed.

Our process/work flow for document review coding services is as under:

DOCUMENT REVIEW AND ITS PROCESS/WORKFLOW

We provide first level and second level (privilege) document review service to our clients. Our error rate is minimal. Besides, the first level Quality Check (QC)of the documents review is done by our QC team. Generally, we conduct in-house second level QC of the documents received. However, on client’s demand, we may hire US attorneys to conduct second level QC.

Generally, our Document review company receives various documents indifferent files/formats such as doc files, pst files, tiff files, ppt files, pdf files, jpg files, wmp files, xls files, html files, etc., The project manager and the IT team works in tandem to figure out the documents received and ensure a smooth review. At times, in a non-going project, the project manager may also suggest the tool provider to add a particular spec on the review sheet depending up on the nature of the document review project with client’s suggestions. It aids in addressing client’s aspirations and concerns and facilitating a flawless and unambiguous review.

At the end of each day/two days depending on the project requirement, the project manager collates the documents reviewed/QC’d according to each custodianor other list, and presents metrics to the client informing on-time progress keeping a track of the project deadlines. At the end of the project, a complete report in xls sheet is prepared detailing the total documents reviewed in various categories and sent to the client.

Our document review company provides the following services for US law firms:

a)   Wereviewandcodeallofthedocumentsusingthetooltodetermineiftheyareresponsivetothe document requests or relate to the Litigation as per the document requests.

b)  We code the fields for each document: responsive ; privilege ; issue field. For certain documents, we include text in an “attorney notes” field and/or technical issues.

c)  In terms of coding the issue field, all relevant documents (both privileged and non-privileged) are tagged for privilege and issues. A document may be coded for more than one issue. There maybe documents that do not have any applicable issue codes, but are still coded as “responsive.”As such, there may be separate tag called “Other” for such documents. In this case, we generally add a note in the “Attorney Notes” field to indicate why the document is relevant.

d)  For questions and technical problems raised by law firms, we flag the problematic documents for law firm’s attention.

e)   We code all responsive documents to categorize them as privileged—whether it be the attorney-client privilege or attorney work-product doctrine. We generally code as per fields such as attorney-client privilege; attorney work product; attorney-client redacted; and/or non-privileged.  To the extent that any documents require red actions, we include a note directing the law firm to the privileged text in the document.

f)   We also provide all services that can reasonably be considered incidental or ancillary for the   purposes of document review.

Besides using tools in some cases, as per the client requirements, we also review the documents and work in an excel sheet which subsequently can be uploaded into a tool by the law firm, if necessary.