Sample Assignment Workflow - Substance Review

 

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Introduction

Our example workflow series illustrates how Everlaw's robust feature set can be leveraged to create workflows that streamline and optimize review.

This sample workflow uses: Search, Assignments, Project Settings.

Note: There are nuances to creating linked assignments or assignments with very similar inclusion criteria that might result in unexpected behavior. If you want to create such assignments for your project, please consider reaching out to Everlaw support, or your vendor's support team, to discuss best practices and expected behavior for the assignments.

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Background

Imagine that during your meet-and-confer with opposing counsel, you agree upon the phrase "energy prices" as a search term. You suspect that this term will return interesting and relevant documents. You want your team to review all of the documents with this particular term. 

Here's a suggested review workflow we're going to build in Everlaw:

flowchart2.png

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Step 1 - Setting up the requisite codes

First, make sure that the appropriate codes are set up in your case. Codes will be used by your reviewers to note the relevance of documents, as well as whether or not documents are related to particular issues in your case. You can add codes in the case settings page, under the "review" section. In the example below, we're setting up a new "Fraud" coding category that has three codes: "Accounting", "Financial", and "Consumer". Rating codes (hot, warm, cold) are included by default in cases on Everlaw. To learn more about setting up categories and codes, check out our coding sheet help

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Step 2 - Check how many documents you need to review

Run a search for "energy prices" to find how many documents contain that phrase in your database. To learn more about searches, visit our search help

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Looks like there are 5,819 documents that match your search criteria. This seems like a reviewable number. Click the "Search" button to pull up a table containing all the documents that your search returns. That should bring you to this view:

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Step 3: Create the initial assignment

Click the Batch icon in your results table toolbar, and then select "Assign." This will prompt the assignment creation wizard, which allows you to divvy up the documents in your table among your reviewers. We're going to start by making the first pass assignment group. The first pass assignment group is going to assign out the documents to Clay, AJ, and Clair. They will be required to do a cursory pass in which they rate documents either hot, warm, or cold. In addition, newly uploaded documents that contain the phrase "energy prices" will automatically be added to the assignment group. 

The images below show the steps taken in the assignment creation wizard to generate the assignment. We're not going to provide a full walkthrough here; please consult our assignment help articles for more detailed information about creating assignments.

Step 1: Name the assignment group

namegroup1.png

Step 2: Select the review criteria

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Step 3: Select reviewers for the assignment group

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Step 4: Configure the assignment group. To learn more about these options, click here.

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Step 5: Allocate the initial set of documents and enable the optional self-assign permissions. To learn more, click here

allocate1.png

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Step 4 - Create the second pass of cold docs assignment group

Great! Your first assignment group has been created. Now, let's create the "second pass of cold docs" assignment group. Documents from the first pass review that have been rated cold will automatically be added to this assignment group. Ian and Byron will be tasked with reviewing these documents to double-check their relevance rating.

Similar to above, we won't be walking through the assignment group creation in detail. If you want more information, please visit our help documentation.

Step 1: Launch the assignment creation wizard from the homepage

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Step 2: Create the inclusion criteria to capture the appropriate document. To learn more, click here.

inclusioncriteria2-r64.png

Step 3: Name the assignment group

namegroup2.png

Step 4: Change the review criteria to the following to ensure that the assignment group works correctly (to find out why, check out our help article about the topic):

reviewcriteria2-r64.png

Step 5: Choose the reviewers for the assignment group. Note that these reviewers must match the reviewers in the Review Criteria step.

selectusers2.png

Step 6: Configure the assignment group. To learn more about these options, click here.

configure2-updated.png

Step 7: Allocate the initial set of documents, if possible (in cases without  review activity, there will not be any documents that can be assigned out during this step)

allocate2.png

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Step 5 - Create the last assignment group

Now, we can make the final assignment group. Documents from two sources feed into this assignment group:

  • Documents rated hot or warm from the 'first pass review' assignment group
  • Documents whose rating was changed from cold to either hot or warm in the 'second pass of cold docs' assignment group

Since these documents have a high likelihood of being relevant, you might want to assign some higher level attorneys to look at them, in this case Greg and Lisa. Greg and Lisa can change the rating of the documents in this assignment group, as well as apply other coding designations to note why documents are relevant.

Step 1: Launch the assignment creation wizard from the homepage

Step 2: Create the inclusion criteria to capture the appropriate document. To learn more, click here.

Step 3: Name the assignment group

namegroup3.png

Step 4: Change the review criteria to the following to ensure that the assignment group works correctly (to find out why, check out our help article about the topic):

reviewcriteria3-r64.png

Step 5: Choose the reviewers for the assignment group. Note that these reviewers must match the reviewers in the Review Criteria step.

selectusers3.png

Step 6: Configure the assignment group. To learn more about these options, click here.

configure3-updated.png

Step 7: Allocate the initial set of documents, if possible (in cases without  review activity, there will not be any documents that can be assigned out during this step)

allocate3.png

Congrats! You've created an automated assignment workflow that will update dynamically as uploads and review progress. The design of this workflow also ensures that higher-level attorneys on the case only need to review documents are are likely to be highly relevant.

To learn more about assignments and other assignment features not covered in this workflow, click here.

Want to adapt this workflow for your case, or discuss workflow ideas? Email us at support@everlaw.com.

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