Empowerment: How Automation Drives Workflows in Law and eDiscovery
- Questa Discovery
- Aug 28, 2024
- 3 min read
Control is a crucial factor in convincing eDiscovery professionals to embrace technology tools and to get their stakeholders at every step of the process to adopt those tools. The harder it is for these folks to determine how their investigatory matters will be configured, and how individual steps and tasks will be completed, and how efficiently processing, review and production will be achieved, the messier and more unwieldy the results may become.
Achieving a greater measure of control requires that eDiscovery-related technologies empower their administrative-level users. And the way such power is harnessed is through the use of workflow automation, which makes systems easier to use—and users more likely to embrace them.
Defining Workflow Automation
Workflow automation combines access control, auto-notification, the setting of rules-based conditions and machine-learning tools. Together, these technologies build common sense, predictability, compliance and a seamless path from step to step into what eDiscovery professionals need to accomplish in order to deliver a smart, powerful investigation on time and on budget.
In many advanced systems, an investigatory project’s workflow is set mainly within two environments. There’s a matter configuration interface where rules can be set and the parameters for machine learning are defined. There’s also a separate area for setting in-system and email-based auto-notifications to alert stakeholders of what is needed from them, when those tasks are needed. Each environment allows an administrative user to promote visibility throughout a project, and also connectivity: connecting eDiscovery leaders to review managers, review managers to reviewers, paralegals to attorneys, attorneys to their clients, and so on.
The Empowerment of Workflow Automation
Here are four ways in which workflow automation helps to empower the full cycle of eDiscovery:
Ingestion
Where once things were clunky and often necessitated the involvement of an organization’s IT folks, modern eDiscovery tools bring the collection and ingestion of electronic data to the front-end users, including the end client directly. Administrators are now able to automatically send their clients a secure link, through which those clients can upload their data straight into the system, remotely without the need for an onsite visit. Once the data is uploaded, notification to the case administrator can be sent. The case can then be created, and processing can be kicked off. Speaking of which…
Processing
Once the data is uploaded, administrators can configure the system to filter the data using specific search terms and can train the system to organize and model the data by discrete topics. This, too, is fully automated upon simple rule-setting and programming within the matter configuration environment .
Investigation
Review commences once the data is processed and is loaded into the system’s review database. This is where the setting of notifications and rules and event handlers becomes truly powerful. Want to ensure a reviewer cannot advance to the next document unless they code a specific “Review Complete” field? You can do that. Want to guard against inconsistent coding, such as attempts to assign a privilege type a document marked as not privileged? You can do that, too. You can also notify specific reviewers of specific assignments and set alerts for completion of tasks, making sure everything continues to run smoothly as the review progresses.
Analytics
Configuring analytics within modern systems gives administrators the insight they need to better manage projects. This can include the creation and sharing of various data queries made by members of the review and technology teams during the course of an investigatory matter, elevating the team’s searching and filtering capabilities.
The idea, through all these manifestations of workflow automation and related AI technologies, is to create a seamless way to tie an eDiscovery project together and fill in all the blanks and move all the needles along the way. Automation promotes collaboration by engaging all of the parties at the point of their participation and promotes enforcement of review protocols by setting parameters via various rules.
The goal is to never lose control over your eDiscovery processes again. Modern workflow automation tools make that goal entirely possible.
Control is a crucial factor in convincing eDiscovery professionals to embrace technology tools and to get their stakeholders at every step of the process to adopt those tools. The harder it is for these folks to determine how their investigatory matters will be configured, and how individual steps and tasks will be completed, and how efficiently processing, review and production will be achieved, the messier and more unwieldly the results may become. [AJ1]
Achieving a greater measure of control requires that eDiscovery-related technologies empower their administrative-level users. And the way such power is harnessed is through the use of workflow automation, which makes systems easier to use—and users more likely to embrace them.
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