Document Review Tools

In my "career" as a document reviewer, I've used several different tools. They're all very easy to use but some are more user-friendly than others, as are the projects.



Right now I'm using a tool that nobody on the team has ever used before. I don't know whether it's a newer product or whether certain law firms or review rooms prefer to stay with the same tools. In this case, the review tool was client-driven; which makes sense. If you're the client and have had good results with a particular tool and have a good relationship with its provider, why change for the next project?



If you're a company that gets sued right, left and center, like some large corporations, it's to your benefit to stick with the same review tool since you don't have to reinvent the wheel; you don't have to go through the hassle of a) re-scanning documents or b) figuring out who to contact to get the electronic copies included in the new review. At that point, all you have to do for high-level employees is to collect documents from the last collection date forward, along with figuring out who else has relevant documents.


From a reviewer standpoint, while I prefer some review products over others, it doesn't really matter to me what product I use, as long as we can figure it out or there's someone who can contact the company if there's trouble.



In my current review, we have fewer layers and in our initial training were on a conference call with the trainer from the company. There's only one layer between so we get questions answered pretty quickly. They're in another time zone, so it isn't always convenient to call them, since there are a couple hours each day in which one party is in the office, but not both.


We do have a local company, Kroll OnTrack, which has a document review tool. Interestingly, I've only used it on one project. I don't know whether that was client or firm-driven.